Collective Variables to Restrain Ions Away From Protein

From: Chris Ing (ing.chris_at_gmail.com)
Date: Thu Apr 17 2014 - 18:36:06 CDT

I'd like to prevent ions from interacting with my membrane-embedded protein
using collective variables. I wanted to avoid using a modification of
keep_waters_out.tcl because it seemed too complex / slow. To make matters
simpler, I only have a handful of neutralizing ions in the box so I can
make a separate variable for each one.

I've tried this colvar code below without success. Ions on one side of the
bilayer seem to be restrained quite nicely but those on the opposite side
of the box are flocking like crazy to the lipid interface trying to get
through the bilayer (to what I imagine is the +20-40 Ang region).

colvar {
    name restrain01
    width 1.0
    lowerBoundary 20.0
    upperBoundary 40.0
    lowerwallconstant 0.5
    upperwallconstant 0.5
    distanceZ {
        # Ion #1
        main {
            atomNumbers { 60984 }
        }
        # C.O.M. of Protein
        ref {
            atomNumbers { 1244 5633 2707 4170 }
        }
        axis ( 0.0, 0.0, 1.0 )
    }
}

If I use the distanceZ "period 1.0" flag, I get the warning:
Lower wall and upper wall are equal in the periodic domain of the colvar:
disabling walls.
and the ions don't go anywhere.

I need to use a specific version of NAMD 2.9 for this task.

It seems like this could be a common problem, but I was unable to find
anything on namd-l about restraining things "away from a target" as opposed
to restraining to a target used in umbrella sampling.

Thanks,
-Chris Ing

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