A GROMOS Parameter Set for Vicinal Diether Functions: Properties of Polyethyleneoxide and Polyethyleneglycol.

An extension 53A6OXY+D to the GROMOS 53A6OXY force field is reported that includes an accurate description of the vicinal diether function. The calibration is based on the model compound 1,2-dimethoxyethane (DXE) and involves a fitting of the relevant torsional-energy parameters against quantum-mechanical (QM) rotational energy profiles for the OCCO and CCOC dihedral angles in vacuum, followed by a validation against experimental conformer populations in the pure liquid and in aqueous mixtures. A systematic comparison between the 53A6, 56A6CARBO, 53A6OXY, and 53A6OXY+D parameter sets is also performed in terms of these properties, as well as in terms of the thermodynamic properties of dimethylether (DME), diethylether (DEE), 1-methoxypropane (MPH), and DXE.

Calculation of relative free energies for ligand-protein binding, solvation, and conformational transitions using the GROMOS software.

The calculation of the relative free energies of ligand-protein binding, of solvation for different compounds, and of different conformational states of a polypeptide is of considerable interest in the design or selection of potential enzyme inhibitors. Since such processes in aqueous solution generally comprise energetic and entropic contributions from many molecular configurations, adequate sampling of the relevant parts of configurational space is required and can be achieved through molecular dynamics simulations. Various techniques to obtain converged ensemble averages and their implementation in the GROMOS software for biomolecular simulation are discussed, and examples of their application to biomolecules in aqueous solution are given.

A reoptimized GROMOS force field for hexopyranose-based carbohydrates accounting for the relative free energies of ring conformers, anomers, epimers, hydroxymethyl rotamers, and glycosidic linkage conformers.

This article presents a reoptimization of the GROMOS 53A6 force field for hexopyranose-based carbohydrates (nearly equivalent to 45A4 for pure carbohydrate systems) into a new version 56A(CARBO) (nearly equivalent to 53A6 for non-carbohydrate systems). This reoptimization was found necessary to repair a number of shortcomings of the 53A6 (45A4) parameter set and to extend the scope of the force field to properties that had not been included previously into the parameterization procedure. The new 56A(CARBO) force field is characterized by: (i) the formulation of systematic build-up rules for the automatic generation of force-field topologies over a large class of compounds including (but not restricted to) unfunctionalized polyhexopyranoses with arbritrary connectivities; (ii) the systematic use of enhanced sampling methods for inclusion of experimental thermodynamic data concerning slow or unphysical processes into the parameterization procedure; and (iii) an extensive validation against available experimental data in solution and, to a limited extent, theoretical (quantum-mechanical) data in the gas phase.

Ball-and-Stick Local Elevation Umbrella Sampling: Molecular Simulations Involving Enhanced Sampling within Conformational or Alchemical Subspaces of Low Internal Dimensionalities, Minimal Irrelevant Volumes, and Problem-Adapted Geometries.

A new method, ball-and-stick local elevation umbrella sampling (B&S-LEUS), is proposed to enhance the sampling in computer simulations of (bio)molecular systems. It enables the calculation of conformational free-energy differences between states (or alchemical free-energy differences between molecules), even in situations where the definition of these states relies on a conformational subspace involving more than a few degrees of freedom. The B&S-LEUS method consists of the following steps: (A) choice of a reduced conformational subspace; (B) representation of the relevant states by means of spheres ("balls"), each associated with a biasing potential involving a one-dimensional radial memory-based term and a radial confinement term; (C) definition of a set of lines ("sticks") connecting these spheres, each associated with a biasing potential involving a one-dimensional longitudinal memory-based term and a transverse confinement term; (D) unification of the biasing potentials corresponding to the union of all of the spheres and lines (active subspace) into a single biasing potential according to the enveloping distribution sampling (EDS) scheme; (E) build-up of the memory using the local elevation (LE) procedure, leading to a biasing potential enabling a nearly uniform sampling (radially within the spheres, longitudinally within the lines) of the active subspace; (F) generation of a biased ensemble of configurations using this preoptimized biasing potential, following an umbrella sampling (US) approach; and (G) calculation of the relative free energies of the states via reweighting and state assignment.

Enhanced Conformational Sampling in Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Solvated Peptides: Fragment-Based Local Elevation Umbrella Sampling.

A new method, fragment-based local elevation umbrella sampling (FB-LEUS), is proposed to enhance the conformational sampling in explicit-solvent molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of solvated polymers. The method is derived from the local elevation umbrella sampling (LEUS) method [ Hansen and Hünenberger , J. Comput.

Conformational properties of glucose-based disaccharides investigated using molecular dynamics simulations with local elevation umbrella sampling.

Explicit-solvent molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of the 11 glucose-based disaccharides in water at 300K and 1bar are reported. The simulations were carried out with the GROMOS 45A4 force-field and the sampling along the glycosidic dihedral angles phi and psi was artificially enhanced using the local elevation umbrella sampling (LEUS) method. The trajectories are analyzed in terms of free-energy maps, stable and metastable conformational states (relative free energies and estimated transition timescales), intramolecular H-bonds, single molecule configurational entropies, and agreement with experimental data.

Theoretical Investigation of Solvent Effects on Glycosylation Reactions: Stereoselectivity Controlled by Preferential Conformations of the Intermediate Oxacarbenium-Counterion Complex.

The mechanism of solvent effects on the stereoselectivity of glycosylation reactions is investigated using quantum-mechanical (QM) calculations and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, considering a methyl-protected glucopyranoside triflate as a glycosyl donor equivalent and the solvents acetonitrile, ether, dioxane, or toluene, as well as gas-phase conditions (vacuum). The QM calculations on oxacarbenium-solvent complexes do not provide support to the usual solvent-coordination hypothesis, suggesting that an experimentally observed β-selectivity (α-selectivity) is caused by the preferential coordination of a solvent molecule to the reactive cation on the α-side (β-side) of the anomeric carbon. Instead, explicit-solvent MD simulations of the oxacarbenium-counterion (triflate ion) complex (along with corresponding QM calculations) are compatible with an alternative mechanism, termed here the conformer and counterion distribution hypothesis.

Using the local elevation method to construct optimized umbrella sampling potentials: calculation of the relative free energies and interconversion barriers of glucopyranose ring conformers in water.

A method is proposed to combine the local elevation (LE) conformational searching and the umbrella sampling (US) conformational sampling approaches into a single local elevation umbrella sampling (LEUS) scheme for (explicit-solvent) molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. In this approach, an initial (relatively short) LE build-up (searching) phase is used to construct an optimized biasing potential within a subspace of conformationally relevant degrees of freedom, that is then used in a (comparatively longer) US sampling phase. This scheme dramatically enhances (in comparison with plain MD) the sampling power of MD simulations, taking advantage of the fact that the preoptimized biasing potential represents a reasonable approximation to the negative of the free energy surface in the considered conformational subspace.