TY - GEN A1 - Deuflhard, Peter A1 - Schütte, Christof T1 - Molecular Conformation Dynamics and Computational Drug Design N2 - The paper surveys recent progress in the mathematical modelling and simulation of essential molecular dynamics. Particular emphasis is put on computational drug design wherein time scales of $msec$ up to $min$ play the dominant role. Classical long-term molecular dynamics computations, however, would run into ill-conditioned initial value problems already after time spans of only $psec=10^{-12} sec$. Therefore, in order to obtain results for times of pharmaceutical interest, a combined deterministic-stochastic model is needed. The concept advocated in this paper is the direct identification of metastable conformations together with their life times and their transition patterns. It can be interpreted as a {\em transfer operator} approach corresponding to some underlying hybrid Monte Carlo process, wherein short-term trajectories enter. Once this operator has been discretized, which is a hard problem of its own, a stochastic matrix arises. This matrix is then treated by {\em Perron cluster analysis}, a recently developed cluster analysis method involving the numerical solution of an eigenproblem for a Perron cluster of eigenvalues. In order to avoid the 'curse of dimension', the construction of appropriate boxes for the spatial discretization of the Markov operator requires careful consideration. As a biomolecular example we present a rather recent SARS protease inhibitor. T3 - ZIB-Report - 03-20 KW - conformation dynamics KW - Monte Carlo methods KW - transfer operations KW - Hamiltonian dynamics KW - Smoluchowski dynamics KW - metastable sets KW - Perron cluster an Y1 - 2003 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-7427 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Fischer, Alexander A1 - Schütte, Christof A1 - Deuflhard, Peter A1 - Cordes, Frank T1 - Hierarchical Uncoupling-Coupling of Metastable Conformations N2 - Uncoupling-coupling Monte Carlo (UCMC) combines uncoupling techniques for finite Markov chains with Markov chain Monte Carlo methodology. UCMC aims at avoiding the typical metastable or trapping behavior of Monte Carlo techniques. From the viewpoint of Monte Carlo, a slowly converging long-time Markov chain is replaced by a limited number of rapidly mixing short-time ones. Therefore, the state space of the chain has to be hierarchically decomposed into its metastable conformations. This is done by means of combining the technique of conformation analysis as recently introduced by the authors, and appropriate annealing strategies. We present a detailed examination of the uncoupling-coupling procedure which uncovers its theoretical background, and illustrates the hierarchical algorithmic approach. Furthermore, application of the UCMC algorithm to the $n$-pentane molecule allows us to discuss the effect of its crucial steps in a typical molecular scenario. T3 - ZIB-Report - 01-03 KW - almost invariant sets KW - bridge sampling KW - metastability KW - hierarchical annealing KW - hybrid Monte Carlo KW - $n$-pentane molecule KW - ratio of normalizing co Y1 - 2001 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-6296 ER -