Mechanical/molecular Mechanical Methods (molecular + mechanical_methods)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Comparison of basis set effects and the performance of ab initio and DFT methods for probing equilibrium fluctuations

JOURNAL OF COMPUTATIONAL CHEMISTRY, Issue 2 2007
Ross C. Walker
Abstract The electronic absorption and emission spectra of large molecules reflect the extent and timescale of electron-vibration coupling and therefore the extent and timescale of relaxation/reorganization in response to a perturbation. In this paper, we present a comparison of the calculated absorption and emission spectra of NADH in liver alcohol dehydrogenase (LADH), using quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical methods, in which we vary the QM component. Specifically, we have looked at the influence of basis set (STO-3G, 3-21G*, 6-31G*, CC-pVDZ, and 6-311G**), as well as the influence of applying the DFT TD-B3LYP and ab initio TD-HF and CIS methods to the calculation of absorption/emission spectra and the reorganization energy (Stokes shift). The ab initio TD-HF and CIS methods reproduce the experimentally determined Stokes shift and spectral profiles to a high level of agreement, while the TD-B3LYP method significantly underestimates the Stokes shift, by 45%. We comment on the origin of this problem and suggest that ab initio methods may be naturally more suited to predicting molecular behavior away from equilibrium geometries. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem 28: 478,490, 2007 [source]


Comparison of linear-scaling semiempirical methods and combined quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical methods for enzymic reactions.

JOURNAL OF COMPUTATIONAL CHEMISTRY, Issue 14 2002

Abstract QM/MM methods have been developed as a computationally feasible solution to QM simulation of chemical processes, such as enzyme-catalyzed reactions, within a more approximate MM representation of the condensed-phase environment. However, there has been no independent method for checking the quality of this representation, especially for highly nonisotropic protein environments such as those surrounding enzyme active sites. Hence, the validity of QM/MM methods is largely untested. Here we use the possibility of performing all-QM calculations at the semiempirical PM3 level with a linear-scaling method (MOZYME) to assess the performance of a QM/MM method (PM3/AMBER94 force field). Using two model pathways for the hydride-ion transfer reaction of the enzyme dihydrofolate reductase studied previously (Titmuss et al., Chem Phys Lett 2000, 320, 169,176), we have analyzed the reaction energy contributions (QM, QM/MM, and MM) from the QM/MM results and compared them with analogous-region components calculated via an energy partitioning scheme implemented into MOZYME. This analysis further divided the MOZYME components into Coulomb, resonance and exchange energy terms. For the model in which the MM coordinates are kept fixed during the reaction, we find that the MOZYME and QM/MM total energy profiles agree very well, but that there are significant differences in the energy components. Most significantly there is a large change (,16 kcal/mol) in the MOZYME MM component due to polarization of the MM region surrounding the active site, and which arises mostly from MM atoms close to (<10 Å) the active-site QM region, which is not modelled explicitly by our QM/MM method. However, for the model where the MM coordinates are allowed to vary during the reaction, we find large differences in the MOZYME and QM/MM total energy profiles, with a discrepancy of 52 kcal/mol between the relative reaction (product,reactant) energies. This is largely due to a difference in the MM energies of 58 kcal/mol, of which we can attribute ,40 kcal/mol to geometry effects in the MM region and the remainder, as before, to MM region polarization. Contrary to the fixed-geometry model, there is no correlation of the MM energy changes with distance from the QM region, nor are they contributed by only a few residues. Overall, the results suggest that merely extending the size of the QM region in the QM/MM calculation is not a universal solution to the MOZYME- and QM/MM-method differences. They also suggest that attaching physical significance to MOZYME Coulomb, resonance and exchange components is problematic. Although we conclude that it would be possible to reparameterize the QM/MM force field to reproduce MOZYME energies, a better way to account for both the effects of the protein environment and known deficiencies in semiempirical methods would be to parameterize the force field based on data from DFT or ab initio QM linear-scaling calculations. Such a force field could be used efficiently in MD simulations to calculate free energies. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem 23: 1314,1322, 2002 [source]


Energy decomposition scheme for combined ab initio quantum mechanical / molecular mechanical methods

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUANTUM CHEMISTRY, Issue 3 2005
Imre Berente
Abstract A new energy decomposition scheme is presented which paves the way toward the accurate and simple treatment of boundary atoms in combined ab initio quantum mechanical / molecular mechanical methods. We extend the wave function beyond the quantum region to a few atoms of the molecular mechanical region, which are linked directly to boundary atoms. Furthermore, we apply an approximate decomposition scheme, which allows calculating the total energy in terms of one-center atomic contributions. Comparisons with reference ab initio calculations are made, and good agreement is obtained for geometry parameters referring to CC, CC, and CX (XO, S, N) bonds at the boundary, as well as for the rotational energy curve of n -butane. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2005 [source]