Skip to content

Docs CSC will have a service break on Monday 19 October 2026 from 11:00–13:00 EEST. See more information.

GOLD

GOLD is a docking program for predicting how flexible molecules will bind to proteins. GOLD uses a genetic algorithm methodology for protein-ligand docking and allows full ligand and partial protein flexibility.

Available

  • Roihu-CPU: GOLD, Version 2026.1.1
  • Download and install locally

Run module spider ccdc to see module versions and how to load them.

License

License covers academic usage at universities and non-profit research institutes. See our CSD page for details.

Usage

GOLD is a part of the Cambridge Crystallographic Database System. See our CSD page for installation and activation instructions.

Initialize GOLD on Roihu-CPU:

module load ccdc/2026.1

GOLD can be used either from the command-line or via a graphical user interface (GUI (Graphical User Interface)) called Hermes. The best way to run a GUI (Graphical User Interface) remotely on Roihu is to use the Accelerated visualization app of the Roihu web interface.

Interactive use in the web interface

  1. Open the Roihu web interface and log in using your CSC user account.
  2. Open Accelerated Visualization, select the project (partition vizinteractive), set the resources, launch the app and connect with a web browser. See the CSD page for details, billing and known issues.
  3. Open a terminal in the session and load the module (see above).

To run GOLD you can either enter hermes and navigate to the GOLD tab, or alternatively run gold which opens the GOLD wizard of Hermes directly. Note that the GUI (Graphical User Interface) performance can be somewhat slow compared to a local installation.

Example batch scripts

Longer (non-interactive) jobs are best run as batch jobs. See Create Roihu batch jobs and the available partitions for the partition names and resource options.

#!/bin/bash -l
#SBATCH --partition=small
#SBATCH --ntasks=1
#SBATCH --account=yourproject     # insert here the project to be billed
#SBATCH --time=0:30:00            # time as `hh:mm:ss`

module load ccdc/2026.1

gold_auto gold.conf

Note

For docking several ligands in parallel, please have a look at the Python script gold_multi in the CSD Python API (Application programming interface) scripts repository.

More information