MD in various solvents. The Fortunate summary



 Dear Netters,
 After the somewhat provocative summary I posted a week or so ago, the
 good ol' ccl traditions emerged.
 I received useful informations, this is the summary.
 Many thanks for your help
 Best regards,
 luigi
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                       ORIGINAL MESSAGE
 >> I would like to receive informations on comparisons of MD simulations
 >> in vacuo with simulations done by using explicit solvents.
 >> In particular, how compare in vacuo simulations with those performed
 >> in CHCl3 ?
 >>
 >> Any reference is appreciated.
 >
 >
 >Well, I received several requests for a summary, it means that some
 >peoples around the world are interested to the subject, but...
 >
 >                    !!! NO INFORMATIONS AT ALL !!!
 >
 >Like nobody has ever done such comparisons. Unbelivable.
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 From: vkitzing # - at - # sunny.mpimf-heidelberg.mpg.de (Eberhard von Kitzing)
 Andrea Amadei, Antonius B.M. Linssen and Herman J.C. Berendsen (1993).
 "Essential dynamics of proteins." Proteins-Structure Function and
 Genetics
 17(4) 412-425.
 ======================================================================
 From: konrad.koehler # - at - # karobio.se (Konrad Koehler)
      Please find below an excerpt from our chapter:
 1)	Koehler, K. F.; Rao, S. N.; Snyder, J. P. Modeling Drug?Receptor
 Interactions.; in Guidebook on Molecular Modeling in Drug Design ;
 Cohen, N. C., ed.; Academic Press, Inc.: San Diego, 1996, pp 234-336.
      The references all deal with a comparision of vacuum vs. water.
 As you may know, Clark Still's group at Columbia has done some
 comparisons's with their GB/SA solvent continuum model for chloroform
 vs. vacuum.  I am not aware of any comparisons between explicit
 chloroform vs. vacuum.  If you are interested references of the use of
 GB/SA chloroform calculations, I can send you these as well.
 	C.	Macromolecular Conformation and Ligand Binding
 	Just as with small molecules, accounting for solvent effects is
 crucial to the prediction of protein conformation and dynamics.  Vacuum
 molecular mechanics and dynamics calculations produce structures which
 by a variety of measures are unrealistic [1].  Polar side-chains on the
 surface of proteins are often extended to maximize their interaction
 with water.  In contrast, in vacuo minimization cause these side-chains
 to fold-back onto the protein.  This is partially a consequence of
 electrostatic attractions that are not being shielded by solvent.
 Another contributing factor is "van der Waals collapse" of the protein
 structure during in vacuo optimization.  In the gas phase, surface
 atoms are only in contact with atoms on one face and therefore are
 "pulled" toward the center of the protein.  This causes protein
 structure as a whole to be denser than observed experimentally.
 	In order to produce satisfactory protein structures in molecular
 dynamics simulations, either an explicit solvent bath [2] or a solvent
 continuum model [3,4] must be used.  When using atomic solvation
 parameters, the balance between solvation free energy and molecular
 mechanics energy is critical [5,6].  If these two terms are carefully
 balanced, then the simulations have been found to not seriously perturb
 the structure of the protein from its crystallographic starting point
 [7].  One drawback to this approach is that it is assumed that if a
 protein atom is buried within a protein, it is in a hydrophobic
 environment.  However there is of course a great deal of variability in
 the internal environments of proteins.  Hence more accurate ASP's which
 take into account the local environment of buried protein atoms have
 been developed [8].
 	Consideration of solvent is also crucial for evaluating the energetic
 differences between various conformation of macromolecules.  For
 example molecular mechanics energy evaluations which include a
 solvation correction term are able to distinguish between native and
 incorrectly folded protein structures [5,9].  The corresponding in
 vacuo calculations were unable to make this distinction.  Similarly the
 crystallographic conformation of protein loops could only be
 successfully predicted if solvation effects were included in the energy
 evaluation [10].
 	Successful prediction of ligand binding affinities requires accounting
 for solvation effects.  In free energy perturbation predictions of
 relative ligand affinities, explicit solvent is generally used (section
 II.D) whereas empirical approaches generally rely on solvent continuum
 models (section II.C.3).  In an example of the latter strategy, 11
 treat the proteinligand system as a three-dimensional grid (with
 approximately 2 Å resolution) and at each grid point, the steric (van
 der Waals interactions) and electrostatic components of the potential
 are calculated using the force field (CHARMm).  Solvent effects are
 accounted for by (a) the use of a high dielectric constant (e.g., 80
 for water) and by (b) calculating electrostatic interactions by the
 finite difference Poisson-Boltzmann (FDPB) method which incorporates
 the effects of solvent ionic strength and the differing
 polarizabilities of protein and solvent.  At grid points within the
 protein, a constant dielectric of 2 is employed.  This technique was
 applied to the study of diffusion of superoxide into the electric field
 of superoxide dismutase and calculation of association constants as a
 func-tion of ionic strength and amino acid modifications in the enzyme
 active site [11].  The protein was treated as rigid with no
 conforma-tional mobility relative to its X-ray crystallographic
 structure.  The study demonstrated that the electric field of the
 enzyme enhanced association rates of the superoxide by factors
 exceeding 30 as evidenced by the lower association constants for the
 mutant enzymes in which the catalytically important arginine and lysine
 residues were modeled in their neutral forms.  These cationic residues
 were thought to lower the magnitude of the negative electrostatic
 potential barrier around the protein which carries an overall negative
 charge.  This observation was substantiated through simulations on
 mutants in which two glutamates in the vicinity of the copper site were
 altered to lysines resulting in higher association constant for the
 superoxide anion.
 	This implicit solvation method has been successfully applied to the
 determination of relative binding energies of substrate/protein
 interac-tions for a series of ligands for the arabinose and sulfate
 binding proteins [12] in a manner analogous to the superoxide-SOD
 calculations.  The success of this study is attributable in part to the
 small structural perturbations in the ligands or proteins and that
 electrostatics dominate the differences in interactions between the
 various ligands and mutant proteins.  It is not clear however how
 problems associated with conformational mobility likely to accompany
 larger structural variations of the protein and of the ligand will
 affect the calculated electrostatic and steric potentials at grid
 points close to the proteinsolvent interface and hence the calculated
 binding energies.
 1)	Stouten, P. F. W.; Frömmel, C.; Nakamura, H.; Sander, C.; "An
 Effective solvation term based on atomic occupancies for use in protein
 simulations"; Molec. Simulation 1993, 10, 97120.
 2)	Levitt, M.; Sharon, R.; "Accurate simulation of protein dynamics in
 solution"; Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 1988, 85, 7557-7561.
 3)	Solmajer, T.; Mehler, E. L.; "Electrostatic screening in molecular
 dynamics simulations"; Protein Eng. 1991, 4, 911-917.
 4)	Arnold, G. E.; Ornstein, R. L.; "An evaluation of implicit and
 explicit solvent model systems for the molecular dynamics simulation of
 bacteriophage T4 lysozyme"; Proteins 1994, 18, 19-33.
 5)	Cregut, D.; Liautard, J.-P.; Chiche, L.; "Homology modelling of
 annexin I:  implicit solvation improves side-chain prediction and
 combination of evaluation criteria allows recognition of different
 types of conformational error."; Prot. Engin. 1994, 7, 1333-1344.
 6)	Schiffer, C. A.; Caldwell, J. W.; Stroud, R. M.; Kollman, P. A.;
 "Inclusion of solvation free energy with molecular mechanics energy:
 alanyl dipeptide as a test case"; Protein Sci. 1992, 1, 396-400.
 7)	Schiffer, C. A.; Caldwell, J. W.; Stroud, R. M.; Kollman, P. A.;
 "Protein structure prediction with a combined solvation free
 energymolecular mechanics force field."; Mol. Simulations 1993, 10,
 121-149.
 8)	Delarue, M.; Koehl, P.; "Atomic environment energies in proteins
 defined from statistics of accessible and contact surface areas"; J.
 Mol. Biol. 1995, 249, 675-690.
 9)	Novotny, J.; Rashin, A. A.; Bruccoleri, R. E.; "Criteria that
 discriminate between native proteins and incorrectly folded models";
 Proteins 1988, 4, 19-30.
 10)	Smith, K. C.; Honig, B.; "Evaluation of the conformational free
 energies of loops in proteins."; Proteins 1994, 18, 119-132.
 11)	Sharp, K.; Fine, R.; Honig, B.; "Computer simulations of the
 diffusion of a substrate to an active site of an enzyme"; Science 1987,
 236, 1460-1463.
 12)	Shen, J.; Quiocho, F. A.; "Calculations of binding energy
 differences for receptorligand systems using the Poisson-Boltzmann
 method."; J. Comput. Chem. 1995, 16, 445-448.
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 From: Maria Turner <turnerm # - at - # CRHSC.UMontreal.CA>
 I know it's not exactly what you're looking for but you might want to
 look at "Computer Modeling Studies of G Protein Coupled Receptors"
 Kontoyianni and Lybrand, Med. Chem. Res. (1993) 3:407-418 for a
 comparison of MD in vacuo, in vacuo plus lipid bilayer, in vacuo with
 lipid bilayer and continuum model for solvent effects.
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 From: Pieter Stouten <stoutepf # - at - # carbon.dmpc.com>
 This is the only work I know of: S. Yun-yu, W. Lu & W.F. Van Gunsteren,
 "On
 the approximation of solvent effects on the conformation and dynamics of
 cyclosporin A by stochastic dynamics simulation techniques", Molec.
 Simulation 1988, 1, 369-388. It compares water MD, CCl4 MD and vacuum SD.
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 From: "Vijayakumar, Sundararajan" <sundararajan_vijayakumar # - at
 - # merck.com>
 I would like to add that there are a number of papers from Prof. David
 Beveridge's lab at Wesleyan University  examining the effects of
 Implicit/Explicit Solvation and in vacuo on protein and DNA systems,
 using the Gromos Force Field.  The group has also carried out studies
 comparing different solvation models and counter ion treatment for
 oligonucleotides employing AMBER and GROMOS force fields.  I don't have
 the references handy right now but a simple literature search should
 find some of the recent papers!
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 Let me add
 Lauterbach M. Wippf G. In: "Physical Supramolecular Chemistry"
 NATO ASI series (Eds. Echegoyen L., Kaifer A.) Kluwer Academic Publisher
 Dordecht 1996, 65-102
 Fraternali F. Van Gunsteren W.F. An efficient mean solvation force model
 for use in molecular synamics simulations of proteins in aqueous solution
 J. Mol. Biol. 1996, 256, 939
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 | Dr. Luigi Cavallo                                                            |
 | Department Of Chemistry              Fax   : ++39-81-5527771                 |
 | University Of Naples                 Ph    : ++39-81-5476535                 |
 | Via Mezzocannone 4                   Email : cavallo # - at - #
 chemna.dichi.unina.it   |
 | I-80134 Naples, ITALY                                                        |
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