@article{DonatiHartmannKeller, author = {Donati, Luca and Hartmann, Carsten and Keller, Bettina G.}, title = {Girsanov reweighting for path ensembles and Markov state models}, series = {The Journal of Chemical Physics}, volume = {146}, journal = {The Journal of Chemical Physics}, number = {24}, doi = {10.1063/1.4989474}, pages = {244112}, abstract = {The sensitivity of molecular dynamics on changes in the potential energy function plays an important role in understanding the dynamics and function of complex molecules. We present a method to obtain path ensemble averages of a perturbed dynamics from a set of paths generated by a reference dynamics. It is based on the concept of path probability measure and the Girsanov theorem, a result from stochastic analysis to estimate a change of measure of a path ensemble. Since Markov state models (MSMs) of the molecular dynamics can be formulated as a combined phase-space and path ensemble average, the method can be extended to reweight MSMs by combining it with a reweighting of the Boltzmann distribution. We demonstrate how to efficiently implement the Girsanov reweighting in a molecular dynamics simulation program by calculating parts of the reweighting factor "on the fly" during the simulation, and we benchmark the method on test systems ranging from a two-dimensional diffusion process and an artificial many-body system to alanine dipeptide and valine dipeptide in implicit and explicit water. The method can be used to study the sensitivity of molecular dynamics on external perturbations as well as to reweight trajectories generated by enhanced sampling schemes to the original dynamics.}, language = {en} } @article{DonatiWeber, author = {Donati, Luca and Weber, Marcus}, title = {Efficient Estimation of Transition Rates as Functions of pH}, series = {Proceedings in Applied Mathematics \& Mechanics}, volume = {23}, journal = {Proceedings in Applied Mathematics \& Mechanics}, doi = {10.1002/pamm.202300264}, abstract = {Extracting the kinetic properties of a system whose dynamics depend on the pH of the environment with which it exchanges energy and atoms requires sampling the Grand Canonical Ensemble. As an alternative, we present a novel strategy that requires simulating only the most recurrent Canonical Ensembles that compose the Grand Canonical Ensemble. The simulations are used to estimate the Gran Canonical distribution for a specific pH value by reweighting and to construct the transition rate matrix by discretizing the Fokker-Planck equation by Square Root Approximation and robust Perron Cluster Cluster Analysis. As an application, we have studied the tripeptide Ala-Asp-Ala.}, language = {en} } @article{GhysbrechtDonatiKeller, author = {Ghysbrecht, Simon and Donati, Luca and Keller, Bettina G.}, title = {Accuracy of reaction coordinate based rate theories for modelling chemical reactions: insights from the thermal isomerization in retinal}, series = {Submitted to The Journal of Physical Chemistry A}, journal = {Submitted to The Journal of Physical Chemistry A}, abstract = {Modern potential energy surfaces have shifted attention to molecular simulations of chemical reactions. While various methods can estimate rate constants for conformational transitions in molecular dynamics simulations, their applicability to studying chemical reactions remains uncertain due to the high and sharp energy barriers and complex reaction coordinates involved. This study focuses on the thermal cis-trans isomerization in retinal, employing molecular simulations and comparing rate constant estimates based on one-dimensional rate theories with those based on sampling transitions and grid-based models for low-dimensional collective variable spaces. Even though each individual method to estimate the rate passes its quality tests, the rate constant estimates exhibit disparities of up to four orders of magnitude. Rate constant estimates based on one-dimensional reaction coordinates prove challenging to converge, even if the reaction coordinate is optimized. However, consistent estimates of the rate constant are achieved by sampling transitions and by multi-dimensional grid-based models.}, language = {en} } @article{DonatiFackeldeyWeber2023, author = {Donati, Luca and Fackeldey, Konstantin and Weber, Marcus}, title = {Augmented ant colony algorithm for virtual drug discovery}, series = {Journal of Mathematical Chemistry}, volume = {62}, journal = {Journal of Mathematical Chemistry}, doi = {10.1007/s10910-023-01549-6}, pages = {367 -- 385}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Docking is a fundamental problem in computational biology and drug discovery that seeks to predict a ligand's binding mode and affinity to a target protein. However, the large search space size and the complexity of the underlying physical interactions make docking a challenging task. Here, we review a docking method, based on the ant colony optimization algorithm, that ranks a set of candidate ligands by solving a minimization problem for each ligand individually. In addition, we propose an augmented version that takes into account all energy functions collectively, allowing only one minimization problem to be solved. The results show that our modification outperforms in accuracy and efficiency.}, language = {en} } @article{SikorskiNiknejadWeberetal., author = {Sikorski, Alexander and Niknejad, Amir and Weber, Marcus and Donati, Luca}, title = {Tensor-SqRA: Modeling the transition rates of interacting molecular systems in terms of potential energies}, series = {Journal of Chemical Physics}, volume = {160}, journal = {Journal of Chemical Physics}, doi = {10.1063/5.0187792}, pages = {104112}, abstract = {Estimating the rate of rare conformational changes in molecular systems is one of the goals of molecular dynamics simulations. In the past few decades, a lot of progress has been done in data-based approaches toward this problem. In contrast, model-based methods, such as the Square Root Approximation (SqRA), directly derive these quantities from the potential energy functions. In this article, we demonstrate how the SqRA formalism naturally blends with the tensor structure obtained by coupling multiple systems, resulting in the tensor-based Square Root Approximation (tSqRA). It enables efficient treatment of high-dimensional systems using the SqRA and provides an algebraic expression of the impact of coupling energies between molecular subsystems. Based on the tSqRA, we also develop the projected rate estimation, a hybrid data-model-based algorithm that efficiently estimates the slowest rates for coupled systems. In addition, we investigate the possibility of integrating low-rank approximations within this framework to maximize the potential of the tSqRA.}, language = {en} } @article{DonatiSchuetteWeber, author = {Donati, Luca and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Weber, Marcus}, title = {The Kramers turnover in terms of a macro-state projection on phase space}, series = {Molecular Physics}, journal = {Molecular Physics}, number = {Ciccotti Special Issue (by invitation only)}, publisher = {Taylor \& Francis}, doi = {10.1080/00268976.2024.2356748}, pages = {e2356748}, abstract = {We have investigated how Langevin dynamics is affected by the friction coefficient using the novel algorithm ISOKANN, which combines the transfer operator approach with modern machine learning techniques. ISOKANN describes the dynamics in terms of an invariant subspace projection of the Koopman operator defined in the entire state space, avoiding approximations due to dimensionality reduction and discretization. Our results are consistent with the Kramers turnover and show that in the low and moderate friction regimes, metastable macro-states and transition rates are defined in phase space, not only in position space.}, language = {en} }