A new set of atomic radii for accurate estimation of solvation free energy by Poisson–Boltzmann solvent model

The Poisson–Boltzmann implicit solvent (PB) is widely used to estimate the solvation free energies of biomolecules in molecular simulations. An optimized set of atomic radii (PB radii) is an important parameter for PB calculations, which determines the distribution of dielectric constants around the solute. We here present new PB radii for the AMBER protein force field to accurately reproduce the solvation free energies obtained from explicit solvent simulations. The presented PB radii were optimized using results from explicit solvent simulations of the large systems. In addition, we discriminated PB radii for N‐ and C‐terminal residues from those for nonterminal residues. The performances using our PB radii showed high accuracy for the estimation of solvation free energies at the level of the molecular fragment. The obtained PB radii are effective for the detailed analysis of the solvation effects of biomolecules. © 2014 The Authors Journal of Computational Chemistry Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Density functional theory for efficient ab initio molecular dynamics simulations in solution

We present a density functional for first-principles molecular dynamics simulations that includes the electrostatic effects of a continuous dielectric medium. It allows for numerical simulations of molecules in solution in a model polar solvent. We propose a smooth dielectric model function to model solvation into water and demonstrate its good numerical properties for total energy calculations and constant energy molecular dynamics.     

Molecular mechanics and dynamics of biomolecules using a solvent continuum model

An easy implementation of molecular mechanics and molecular dynamics simulation using a continuum solvent model is presented that is particularly suitable for biomolecular simulations. The computation of solvation forces is made using the linear Poisson-Boltzmann equation (polar contribution) and the solvent-accessible surface area approach (nonpolar contribution). The feasibility of the methodology is demonstrated on a small protein and a small DNA hairpin. Although the parameters employed in this model must be refined to gain reliability, the performance of the method, with a standard choice of parameters, is comparable with results obtained by explicit water simulations. Copyright 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Comput Chem 22: 1830-1842, 2001     

Solvent effects on NMR isotropic shielding constants. a comparison between explicit polarizable discrete and continuum approaches

The gas-to-aqueous solution shifts of the 17O and 13C NMR isotropic shielding constants for the carbonyl chromophore in formaldehyde and acetone are investigated. For the condensed-phase problem, we use the hybrid density functional theory/molecular mechanics approach in combination with a statistical averaging over an appropriate number of solute-solvent configurations extracted from classical molecular dynamics simulations. The PBE0 exchange-correlation functional and the 6-311++G(2d,2p) basis set are used for the calculation of the shielding constants. London atomic orbitals are employed to ensure gauge-origin independent results. The effects of the bulk solvent molecules are found to be crucial in order to calculate accurate solvation shifts of the shielding constants. Very good agreement between the computed and experimental solvation shifts is obtained for the shielding constants of acetone when a polarizable water potential is used. Supermolecular results based on geometry-optimized molecular structures are presented. We also compare the results obtained with the polarizable continuum model to the results obtained using explicit MM molecules to model the bulk solvent effect.     

Comparison of various implicit solvent models in molecular dynamics simulations of immunoglobulin G light chain dimer

The present study tests performance of different solvation models applied to molecular dynamics simulation of a large, dimeric protein molecule. Analytical Continuum Electrostatics (ACE) with two different parameter sets, older V98 and new V01, and Effective Energy Function (EEF) are employed in molecular dynamics simulation of immunoglobulin G (IgG) light chain dimer and variable domain of IgG light chain. Results are compared with explicit solvent and distance dependent dielectric constant (DDE) calculations. The overall analysis shows that the EEF method yields results comparable to explicit solvent simulations; however, the stability of simulations is lower. On the other hand, the ACE_V98 model does not seem to achieve the accuracy or stability expected in nanosecond timescale MD simulation for the studied systems. The ACE_V01 model greatly improves stability of the calculation; nonetheless, changes in radius of gyration and solvent accessible surface of the studied systems may indicate that the parameter set still needs to be improved if the method is supposed to be used for simulations of large, polymeric proteins. Additionally, electrostatic contribution to the solvation free energy calculated in the ACE model is compared with a numerical treatment of the dielectric continuum model. Wall clock time of all simulations is compared. It shows that EEF calculation is six times faster than corresponding ACE and 50 times faster than explicit solvent simulations.     

Theoretical study of the effects of solvent environment on photophysical properties and electronic structure of paracyclophane chromophores

We use first-principles quantum-chemical approaches to study absorption and emission properties of recently synthesized distyrylbenzene (DSB) derivative chromophores and their dimers (two DSB molecules linked through a [2.2]paracyclophane moiety). Several solvent models are applied to model experimentally observed shifts and radiative lifetimes in Stokes nonpolar organic solvents (toluene) and water. The molecular environment is simulated using the implicit solvation models, as well as explicit water molecules and counterions. Calculations show that neither implicit nor explicit solvent models are sufficient to reproduce experimental observations. The contact pair between the chromophore and counterion, on the other hand, is able to reproduce the experimental data when a partial screening effect of the solvent is taken into account. Based on our simulations we suggest two mechanisms for the excited-state lifetime increase in aqueous solutions. These findings may have a number of implications for organic light-emitting devices, electronic functionalities of soluble polymers and molecular fluorescent labels, and their possible applications as biosensors and charge/energy conduits in nanoassemblies.     

On use of the Amber potential with the Langevin dipole method

Inclusion of solvent effects in biomolecular simulations is most ideally done using explicit methods, as they are able to capture the heterogeneous environment typical of biomolecules and systems involving them (e.g., proteins at solid interfaces). Common explicit methods based on molecular solvent models (e.g., TIP and SPC models) and molecular dynamic or Monte Carlo simulation are computationally expensive and are, therefore, not well-suited to situations where many simulations are required (e.g., in the ab initio structure prediction or design contexts). In such cases, more coarse-grained explicit approaches such as the Langevin dipole (LD) method of Warshel and co-workers are more appropriate. The recent incarnations of the LD method appear to produce good solvation free energy estimates. These incarnations use charges and solute structures obtained from high-level quantum mechanics simulations. As such an approach is clearly not possible for larger solutes or when many structures are to be considered, an alternative must be sought. One possibility is to use structures and charges derived from an existing analytical potential model-we report on such a coupling here with the Amber potential model. The accuracy and computational performance of this hybrid approach, which we term LD-Amber to distinguish it from previous incarnations of the LD method, was assessed by comparing results obtained from the approach with those from experiment and other theoretical methods for the solvation of 18 amino acid analogues and the alanine dipeptide. This comparison shows that the LD-Amber approach can yield results in line with experiment both qualitatively and quantitatively and is as accurate as other explicit methods while being computationally much cheaper.     

Smooth solvation method for d-orbital semiempirical calculations of biological reactions. 2. Application to transphosphorylation thio effects in solution

Density-functional and semiempirical quantum methods and continuum dielectric and explicit solvation models are applied to study the role of solvation on the stabilization of native and thio-substituted transphosphorylation reactions. Extensive comparison is made between results obtained from the different methods. For the semiempirical methods, explicit solvation was treated using a hybrid quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical (QM/MM) approach and the implicit solvation was treated using a recently developed smooth solvation model implemented into a d-orbital semiempirical framework (MNDO/d-SCOSMO) within CHARMM. The different quantum and solvation methods were applied to the transesterification of a 3'-ribose,5'-methyl phosphodiester that serves as a nonenzymatic model for the self-cleavage reaction catalyzed by the hammerhead and hairpin ribozymes. Thio effects were studied for a double sulfur substitution at the nonbridging phosphoryl oxygen positions. The reaction profiles of both the native and double sulfur-substituted reactions from the MNDO/d-SCOSMO calculations were similar to the QM/MM results and consistent with the experimentally observed trends. These results underscore the need for a d-orbital semiempirical representation for phosphorus and sulfur for the study of experimentally observed thio effects in enzymatic and nonenzymatic phosphoryl transfer reactions. One of the major advantages of the present approach is that it can be applied to model chemical reactions at a significantly lower computational cost than either the density-functional calculations with implicit solvation or the semiempirical QM/MM simulations with explicit solvent.     

Predicting hydration free energies with a hybrid QM/MM approach: an evaluation of implicit and explicit solvation models in SAMPL4

The correct representation of solute-water interactions is essential for the accurate simulation of most biological phenomena. Several highly accurate quantum methods are available to deal with solvation by using both implicit and explicit solvents. So far, however, most evaluations of those methods were based on a single conformation, which neglects solute entropy. Here, we present the first test of a novel approach to determine hydration free energies that uses molecular mechanics (MM) to sample phase space and quantum mechanics (QM) to evaluate the potential energies. Free energies are determined by using re-weighting with the Non-Boltzmann Bennett (NBB) method. In this context, the method is referred to as QM-NBB. Based on snapshots from MM sampling and accounting for their correct Boltzmann weight, it is possible to obtain hydration free energies that incorporate the effect of solute entropy. We evaluate the performance of several QM implicit solvent models, as well as explicit solvent QM/MM for the blind subset of the SAMPL4 hydration free energy challenge. While classical free energy simulations with molecular dynamics give root mean square deviations (RMSD) of 2.8 and 2.3 kcal/mol, the hybrid approach yields an improved RMSD of 1.6 kcal/mol. By selecting an appropriate functional and basis set, the RMSD can be reduced to 1 kcal/mol for calculations based on a single conformation. Results for a selected set of challenging molecules imply that this RMSD can be further reduced by using NBB to reweight MM trajectories with the SMD implicit solvent model.     

Evaluation of DNA Force Fields in Implicit Solvation

DNA structural deformations and dynamics are crucial to its interactions in the cell. Theoretical simulations are essential tools to explore the structure, dynamics, and thermodynamics of biomolecules in a systematic way. Molecular mechanics force fields for DNA have benefited from constant improvements during the last decades. Several studies have evaluated and compared available force fields when the solvent is modeled by explicit molecules. On the other hand, few systematic studies have assessed the quality of duplex DNA models when implicit solvation is employed. The interest of an implicit modeling of the solvent consists in the important gain in the simulation performance and conformational sampling speed. In this study, respective influences of the force field and the implicit solvation model choice on DNA simulation quality are evaluated. To this end, extensive implicit solvent duplex DNA simulations are performed, attempting to reach both conformational and sequence diversity convergence. Structural parameters are extracted from simulations and statistically compared to available experimental and explicit solvation simulation data. Our results quantitatively expose the respective strengths and weaknesses of the different DNA force fields and implicit solvation models studied. This work can lead to the suggestion of improvements to current DNA theoretical models.     

Optimized parameters for continuum solvation calculations with carbohydrates

Continuum solvent models have been shown to be an efficient method for the calculation of the energetics of biomolecules in solution. However, for these methods to produce accurate results, an appropriate set of atomic radii or volumes is needed. While these have been developed for proteins and nucleic acids, the same is not true of carbohydrates. Here, a set of optimized parameters for continuum solvation calculations of carbohydrates in conjunction with the Carbohydrate Solution Force Field are presented. Explicit solvent free-energy perturbation simulations were performed on a set of hexapyranose sugars and used to fit atomic radii for Poisson-Boltzmann and generalized-Born calculations, and to fit atomic volumes for use with the analytical continuum electrostatics model. The solvation energetics computed with the optimized radii and a Poisson-Boltzmann model show remarkable agreement with explicit solvent simulation, with a root-mean-square error of 1.19 kcal/mol over a large test set of sugars in many conformations. The generalized-Born model gives slightly poorer agreement, but still correlates very strongly, with an error of 1.69 kcal/mol. The analytical continuum electrostatics model correlates well with the explicit solvent results, but gives a larger error of 4.71 kcal/mol. The remarkable agreement between the solvation free energies computed in explicit and implicit solvent provides strong motivation for the use of implicit solvent models in the simulation of carbohydrate-containing systems.     

Ab-initio molecular dynamics and hybrid explicit-implicit solvation model for aqueous and nonaqueous solvents: GFP chromophore in water and methanol solution as case study

Solute–solvent interactions are proxies for understanding how the electronic density of a chromophore interacts with the environment in a more exhaustive way. The subtle balance between polarization, electrostatic, and non-bonded interactions need to be accurately described to obtain good agreement between simulations and experiments. First principles approaches providing accurate configurational sampling through molecular dynamics may be a suitable choice to describe solvent effects on solute chemical–physical properties and spectroscopic features, such as optical absorption of dyes. In this context, accurate energy potentials, obtained by hybrid implicit/explicit solvation methods along with employing nonperiodic boundary conditions, are required to represent bulk solvent around a large solute–solvent cluster. In this work, a novel strategy to simulate methanol solutions is proposed combining ab initio molecular dynamics, a hybrid implicit/explicit flexible solvent model, nonperiodic boundary conditions, and time dependent density functional theory. As case study, the robustness of the proposed protocol has been gauged by investigating the microsolvation and electronic absorption of the anionic green fluorescent protein chromophore in methanol and aqueous solution. Satisfactory results are obtained, reproducing the microsolvation layout of the chromophore and, as a consequence, the experimental trends shown by the optical absorption in different solvents.     

Implementation of the analytic energy gradient for the combined time-dependent density functional theory/effective fragment potential method: application to excited-state molecular dynamics simulations

Excited-state quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics molecular dynamics simulations are performed, to examine the solvent effects on the fluorescence spectra of aqueous formaldehyde. For that purpose, the analytical energy gradient has been derived and implemented for the linear-response time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) combined with the effective fragment potential (EFP) method. The EFP method is an efficient ab initio based polarizable model that describes the explicit solvent effects on electronic excitations, in the present work within a hybrid TDDFT/EFP scheme. The new method is applied to the excited-state MD of aqueous formaldehyde in the n-π* state. The calculated π*→n transition energy and solvatochromic shift are in good agreement with other theoretical results.     

Design of surface active soluble peptide molecules at the air/water interface

Surface active molecules collect at interfaces and have the potential to be used for water evaporation reduction. The objective of this work is to design surface active soluble peptides that collect at the air/water interface using molecular simulations. Rotational isomeric state Monte Carlo (RISMC) sampling together with a solvation model that we recently invented, the AAD solvation model [Gu, C.; Lustig, S.; Trout, B. J. Phys. Chem. B 2006, 110 (3), 1476-1484] was applied to calculate the adsorption free energy of the peptide molecule at the air/water interface. The results were validated by both molecular dynamics simulations with an explicit solvent model and surface tension measurements on synthesized peptides. It was demonstrated that this approach is able to give a reasonable prediction of surface activity with an approximately 50% hit rate in terms of designed surface active molecules actually being surface active. The relationship between the chemical composition and the surface morphology is also discussed.     

Testing the semi-explicit assembly solvation model in the SAMPL3 community blind test

We report here a test of the Semi-Explicit Assembly (SEA) model in the solvation free energy category of the SAMPL3 blind prediction event (summer 2011). We tested how dependent the SEA results are on the chosen force field by performing calculations with both the General Amber and OPLS force fields. We compared our SEA results with full molecular dynamics simulations in explicit solvent. Of the 20 submissions, our SEA/OPLS results gave the second smallest RMS errors in free energies compared to experiments. SEA gives results that are very similar to those of its underlying force field and explicit solvent model. Hence, while the SEA water modeling approach is much faster than explicit solvent simulations, its predictions appear to be just as accurate.     

X-ray spectroscopy of blocked alanine in water solution from supermolecular and supermolecular-continuum solvation models: a first-principles study

The N1s near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS) and X-ray emission spectra (XES) of blocked alanine in water solution have been investigated at the first-principles level based on cluster models constructed from classical molecular dynamics simulations. The bulk solvent has been described by both supermolecular and combined supermolecular-continuum models. With the former model we show that NEXAFS spectra convergent with respect to system size require at least the inclusion of the second solvation shell and that averaged spectra over several hundreds of snapshots can well represent the statistical effect of different instantaneous configurations of the solvation shells. With the combined model we demonstrate that calculations of a medium-sized peptide-water supermolecule qualitatively predict the NEXAFS spectrum of the solvated peptide even considering a single geometry. Furthermore, sampling over hundreds of snapshots by the combined model, the explicit inclusion of even a few waters yields an averaged spectrum in good quantitative agreement with the discrete model results. In comparison, the XES spectra show little dependence on the structures of either the solvent shell or the peptide itself. The ramifications of these findings are discussed.