I am performing docking between two proteins. For the first protein, I am aware of a motif that interacts with the second protein. This motif is 6 amino acids long. So for the docking, should I just select these six amino acids as the active residues? If not, is it possible to create a grid around these residues so that a larger portion of the protein takes part in the docking?
It all depends on what you have for defining the interface for the second protein.
Defining active residues does not prevent other residues to interact.
If you have potential binding site for the second protein, define all relevant residues as active and let HADDOCK select passive residues around those (the server does that for you).
If you have no info for the second protein, only define active residues for your motif and define the entire surface of the second protein as passive (again a server option)
Hello,
For the second protein, I used CPORT to find out the possible active residues and selected them. Is this a better option than defining all its residues as passive? Regardless, I will try out what you suggested as well. Thank you.