Data-driven analysis of the number of Lennard-Jones types needed in a force field.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Schauperl M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8294475 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Molecular dynamics simulations are helpful tools for a range of applications, ranging from drug discovery to protein structure determination. The successful use of this technology largely depends on the potential function, or force field, used to determine the potential energy at each configuration of the system. Most force fields encode all of the relevant parameters to be used in distinct atom types, each associated with parameters for all parts of the force field, typically bond stretches, angle bends, torsions, and nonbonded terms accounting for van der Waals and electrostatic interactions. Much attention has been paid to the nonbonded parameters and their derivation, which are important in particular due to their governance of noncovalent interactions, such as protein-ligand binding. Parametrization involves adjusting the nonbonded parameters to minimize the error between simulation results and experimental properties, such as heats of vaporization and densities of neat liquids. In this setting, determining the best set of atom types is far from trivial, and the large number of parameters to be fit for the atom types in a typical force field can make it difficult to approach a true optimum. Here, we utilize a previously described Minimal Basis Iterative Stockholder (MBIS) method to carry out an atoms-in-molecules partitioning of electron densities. Information from these atomic densities is then mapped to Lennard-Jones parameters using a set of mapping parameters much smaller than the typical number of atom types in a force field. This approach is advantageous in two ways: it eliminates atom types by allowing each atom to have unique Lennard-Jones parameters, and it greatly reduces the number of parameters to be optimized. We show that this approach yields results comparable to those obtained with the typed GAFF 1.7 force field, even when trained on a relatively small amount of experimental data.
| S-EPMC7101068 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations based on atomic models play an important role in the drug-discovery process to screen molecules, estimate binding free energies, and optimize lead compounds in chemical space. Accurate computations of thermodynamic and kinetic properties using MD simulations are highly dependent on the accuracy of the underlying atomic force field. In this context, going beyond the nonpolarizable fixed-charge model by accounting explicitly for induced polarization is highly desirable. The CHARMM polarizable force field based on classical Drude oscillators, in which an auxiliary charged particle is attached via a harmonic spring to its parent nucleus, offers both a computationally convenient and rigorous framework to model explicitly induced electronic polarization in MD simulations. For any molecule of interest, electrostatic partial charges, atomic polarizabilities, and Thole shielding factors, as well as bonded parameters can either be determined from ab initio calculations or ascribed from the knowledge-based library of the CHARMM Generalized force field. While this approach is fairly reliable in general, it is well understood that the overall accuracy of the models with respect to thermodynamic properties such as bulk density, enthalpies, and solvation free energies is particularly sensitive to the nonbonded Lennard-Jones (LJ) parameters. In the present study, we systematically refined the set of LJ parameters for the atom types available in the Drude force field to best match the experimental thermodynamic properties for 416 small druglike organic molecules. To further test the transferability of the optimized parameters, the hydration free energy of 372 molecules was computed. The calculations resulted in a small average error of 0.46 kcal/mol and a Pearson R of 0.9, representing a significant improvement over the additive GAFF force field in our previous study, where an average error of ∼2 kcal/mol was obtained. Such an improvement is consistent with the ability of the polarizable Drude model to more accurately model interactions in different environments. The effort provides a roadmap for the global optimization of force field parameters using experimental data. It is hoped that the present effort will further the application of the Drude polarizable force field in molecular simulations including drug design and discovery.
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Project description:The Lennard-Jones (LJ) potential is a cornerstone of Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations and among the most widely used computational kernels in science. The LJ potential models atomistic attraction and repulsion with century old prescribed parameters (q?=?6, p?=?12, respectively), originally related by a factor of two for simplicity of calculations. We propose the inference of the repulsion exponent through Hierarchical Bayesian uncertainty quantification We use experimental data of the radial distribution function and dimer interaction energies from quantum mechanics simulations. We find that the repulsion exponent p???6.5 provides an excellent fit for the experimental data of liquid argon, for a range of thermodynamic conditions, as well as for saturated argon vapour. Calibration using the quantum simulation data did not provide a good fit in these cases. However, values p???12.7 obtained by dimer quantum simulations are preferred for the argon gas while lower values are promoted by experimental data. These results show that the proposed LJ 6-p potential applies to a wider range of thermodynamic conditions, than the classical LJ 6-12 potential. We suggest that calibration of the repulsive exponent in the LJ potential widens the range of applicability and accuracy of MD simulations.
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Project description:Lennard-Jones (LJ) parameters for a variety of model compounds have previously been optimized within the CHARMM Drude polarizable force field to reproduce accurately pure liquid phase thermodynamic properties as well as additional target data. While the polarizable force field resulting from this optimization procedure has been shown to satisfactorily reproduce a wide range of experimental reference data across numerous series of small molecules, a slight but systematic overestimate of the hydration free energies has also been noted. Here, the reproduction of experimental hydration free energies is greatly improved by the introduction of pair-specific LJ parameters between solute heavy atoms and water oxygen atoms that override the standard LJ parameters obtained from combining rules. The changes are small and a systematic protocol is developed for the optimization of pair-specific LJ parameters and applied to the development of pair-specific LJ parameters for alkanes, alcohols and ethers. The resulting parameters not only yield hydration free energies in good agreement with experimental values, but also provide a framework upon which other pair-specific LJ parameters can be added as new compounds are parametrized within the CHARMM Drude polarizable force field. Detailed analysis of the contributions to the hydration free energies reveals that the dispersion interaction is the main source of the systematic errors in the hydration free energies. This information suggests that the systematic error may result from problems with the LJ combining rules and is combined with analysis of the pair-specific LJ parameters obtained in this work to identify a preliminary improved combining rule.
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Project description:Equations of state based on intermolecular potentials are often developed about the Lennard-Jones (LJ) potential. Many of such EOS have been proposed in the past. In this work, 20 LJ EOS were examined regarding their performance on Brown's characteristic curves and characteristic state points. Brown's characteristic curves are directly related to the virial coefficients at specific state points, which can be computed exactly from the intermolecular potential. Therefore, also the second and third virial coefficient of the LJ fluid were investigated. This approach allows a comparison of available LJ EOS at extreme conditions. Physically based, empirical, and semi-theoretical LJ EOS were examined. Most investigated LJ EOS exhibit some unphysical artifacts.
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Project description:Meaningful efforts in computer-aided drug design (CADD) require accurate molecular mechanical force fields to quantitatively characterize protein-ligand interactions, ligand hydration free energies, and other ligand physical properties. Atomic models of new compounds are commonly generated by analogy from the predefined tabulated parameters of a given force field. Two widely used approaches following this strategy are the General Amber Force Field (GAFF) and the CHARMM General Force Field (CGenFF). An important limitation of using pretabulated parameter values is that they may be inadequate in the context of a specific molecule. To resolve this issue, we previously introduced the General Automated Atomic Model Parameterization (GAAMP) for automatically generating the parameters of atomic models of small molecules, using the results from ab initio quantum mechanical (QM) calculations as target data. The GAAMP protocol uses QM data to optimize the bond, valence angle, and dihedral angle internal parameters, and atomic partial charges. However, since the treatment of van der Waals interactions based on QM is challenging and may often be unreliable, the Lennard-Jones 6-12 parameters are kept unchanged from the initial atom types assignments (GAFF or CGenFF), which limits the accuracy that can be achieved by these models. To address this issue, a new set of Lennard-Jones 6-12 parameters was systematically optimized to reproduce experimental neat liquid densities and enthalpies of vaporization for a large set of 430 compounds, covering a wide range of chemical functionalities. Calculations of the hydration free energy indicate that optimal accuracy for these models is achieved when the molecule-water van der Waals dispersion is rescaled by a factor of 1.115. The final optimized model yields an average unsigned error of 0.79 kcal/mol in the hydration free energies.
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Project description:The development of novel materials has challenges besides their synthesis. Materials such as novel MXenes are difficult to probe experimentally due to their reduced size and low stability under ambient conditions. Quantum mechanics and molecular dynamics simulations have been valuable options for material properties determination. However, computational materials scientists may still have difficulty finding specific force field models for their simulations. Force fields are usually hard to parametrize, and their parameters' determination is computationally expensive. We show the Lennard-Jones (2-body interactions) combined with the Axilrod-Teller (3-body interactions) parametrization process' applicability for metals and new classes of materials (MXenes). Because this parametrization process is simple and computationally inexpensive, it allows users to predict materials' behaviors under close-to-ambient conditions in molecular dynamics, independent of pre-existing potential files. Using the process described in this work, we have made the Ti2C parameters set available for the first time in a peer-reviewed work.
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