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A unified picture of the covalent bond within quantum-accurate force fields: From organic molecules to metallic complexes' reactivity.

ABSTRACT: Computational studies of chemical processes taking place over extended size and time scales are inaccessible by electronic structure theories and can be tackled only by atomistic models such as force fields. These have evolved over the years to describe the most diverse systems. However, as we improve the performance of a force field for a particular physical/chemical situation, we are also moving away from a unified description. Here, we demonstrate that a unified picture of the covalent bond is achievable within the framework of machine learning-based force fields. Ridge regression, together with a representation of the atomic environment in terms of bispectrum components, can be used to map a general potential energy surface for molecular systems at chemical accuracy. This protocol sets the ground for the generation of an accurate and universal class of potentials for both organic and organometallic compounds with no specific assumptions on the chemistry involved.

SUBMITTER: Lunghi A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6544456 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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A unified picture of the covalent bond within quantum-accurate force fields: From organic molecules to metallic complexes' reactivity.

Lunghi Alessandro A Sanvito Stefano S

Science advances 20190531 5

Computational studies of chemical processes taking place over extended size and time scales are inaccessible by electronic structure theories and can be tackled only by atomistic models such as force fields. These have evolved over the years to describe the most diverse systems. However, as we improve the performance of a force field for a particular physical/chemical situation, we are also moving away from a unified description. Here, we demonstrate that a unified picture of the covalent bond i ...[more]

PMID: 31172029

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Project description:Conspectus Molecular mechanical force fields have been successfully used to model condensed-phase and biological systems for a half century. By means of careful parametrization, such classical force fields can be used to provide useful interpretations of experimental findings and predictions of certain properties. Yet, there is a need to further improve computational accuracy for the quantitative prediction of biomolecular interactions and to model properties that depend on the wave functions and not just the energy terms. A new strategy called explicit polarization (X-Pol) has been developed to construct the potential energy surface and wave functions for macromolecular and liquid-phase simulations on the basis of quantum mechanics rather than only using quantum mechanical results to fit analytic force fields. In this spirit, this approach is called a quantum mechanical force field (QMFF). X-Pol is a general fragment method for electronic structure calculations based on the partition of a condensed-phase or macromolecular system into subsystems ("fragments") to achieve computational efficiency. Here, intrafragment energy and the mutual electronic polarization of interfragment interactions are treated explicitly using quantum mechanics. X-Pol can be used as a general, multilevel electronic structure model for macromolecular systems, and it can also serve as a new-generation force field. As a quantum chemical model, a variational many-body (VMB) expansion approach is used to systematically improve interfragment interactions, including exchange repulsion, charge delocalization, dispersion, and other correlation energies. As a quantum mechanical force field, these energy terms are approximated by empirical functions in the spirit of conventional molecular mechanics. This Account first reviews the formulation of X-Pol, in the full variationally correct version, in the faster embedded version, and with systematic many-body improvements. We discuss illustrative examples involving water clusters (which show the power of two-body corrections), ethylmethylimidazolium acetate ionic liquids (which reveal that the amount of charge transfer between anion and cation is much smaller than what has been assumed in some classical simulations), and a solvated protein in aqueous solution (which shows that the average charge distribution of carbonyl groups along the polypeptide chain depends strongly on their position in the sequence, whereas they are fixed in most classical force fields). The development of QMFFs also offers an opportunity to extend the accuracy of biochemical simulations to areas where classical force fields are often insufficient, especially in the areas of spectroscopy, reactivity, and enzyme catalysis.

Project description:The high concentration of macromolecules in the crowded cellular interior influences different thermodynamic and kinetic properties of proteins, including their structural stabilities, intermolecular binding affinities and enzymatic rates. Moreover, various structural biology methods, such as NMR or different spectroscopies, typically involve samples with relatively high protein concentration. Due to large sampling requirements, however, the accuracy of classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations in capturing protein behavior at high concentration still remains largely untested. Here, we use explicit-solvent MD simulations and a total of 6.4 µs of simulated time to study wild-type (folded) and oxidatively damaged (unfolded) forms of villin headpiece at 6 mM and 9.2 mM protein concentration. We first perform an exhaustive set of simulations with multiple protein molecules in the simulation box using GROMOS 45a3 and 54a7 force fields together with different types of electrostatics treatment and solution ionic strengths. Surprisingly, the two villin headpiece variants exhibit similar aggregation behavior, despite the fact that their estimated aggregation propensities markedly differ. Importantly, regardless of the simulation protocol applied, wild-type villin headpiece consistently aggregates even under conditions at which it is experimentally known to be soluble. We demonstrate that aggregation is accompanied by a large decrease in the total potential energy, with not only hydrophobic, but also polar residues and backbone contributing substantially. The same effect is directly observed for two other major atomistic force fields (AMBER99SB-ILDN and CHARMM22-CMAP) as well as indirectly shown for additional two (AMBER94, OPLS-AAL), and is possibly due to a general overestimation of the potential energy of protein-protein interactions at the expense of water-water and water-protein interactions. Overall, our results suggest that current MD force fields may distort the picture of protein behavior in biologically relevant crowded environments.

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A unified picture of the covalent bond within quantum-accurate force fields: From organic molecules to metallic complexes' reactivity.

Publications

A unified picture of the covalent bond within quantum-accurate force fields: From organic molecules to metallic complexes' reactivity.

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