Paper Citing NAMD - Abstract
Timko, Jeff; Kuyucak, Serdar
Investigation of polarization effects in the gramicidin A channel from ab initio molecular dynamics simulations
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL PHYSICS, 137 Art. No. 205106, NOV 28 2012
Polarization is an important component of molecular interactions and is expected to play a particularly significant role in inhomogeneous environments such as pores and interfaces. Here we investigate the effects of polarization in the gramicidin A ion channel by performing quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and comparing the results with those obtained from classical MD simulations with non-polarizable force fields. We consider the dipole moments of backbone carbonyl groups and channel water molecules as well as a number of structural quantities of interest. The ab initio results show that the dipole moments of the carbonyl groups and water molecules are highly sensitive to the hydrogen bonds (H-bonds) they participate in. In the absence of a K+ ion, water molecules in the channel are quite mobile, making the H-bond network highly dynamic. A central K+ ion acts as an anchor for the channel waters, stabilizing the H-bond network and thereby increasing their average dipole moments. In contrast, the K+ ion has little effect on the dipole moments of the neighboring carbonyl groups. The weakness of the ion-peptide interactions helps to explain the near diffusion-rate conductance of K+ ions through the channel. We also address the sampling issue in relatively short ab initio MD simulations. Results obtained from a continuous 20 ps ab initio MD simulation are compared with those generated by sampling ten windows from a much longer classical MD simulation and running each window for 2 ps with ab initio MD. Both methods yield similar results for a number of quantities of interest, indicating that fluctuations are fast enough to justify the short ab initio MD simulations. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4768247]
