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A new and time efficient model to evaluate the free energy of solvation has been developed. The solvation free energy is separated into an electrostatic term, a hydrogen bond term, and a rest-term, combining both entropic and van der Waals effects. The electrostatic contribution is evaluated with a simplified boundary element method using the partial charges of the MMFF94 force field. The number of hydrogen bonds and the solvent excluded surface area over the surface atoms are used in a linear model to estimate the non-electrostatic contribution. This model is applied to a set of 213 small and mostly organic molecules, yielding an rmsd of 0.87kcal/mol and a correlation with experimental data of r=0.951. The model is applied as a supplementary component of the free energy of binding to estimate binding constants of protein ligand complexes. The intermolecular interaction energy is evaluated by using the MMFF94 force field.
RNA 3D-Modeling
(2003)
This article presents a new computational approach to the three-dimensional (3D) modeling of ribonucleic acid (RNA) sequences with unknown spatial structure. The main concept is a mapping of the query sequence onto the 3D structures of a suitable template RNA molecule. This technique called \textit{threading} has originally been developed for the modeling of protein 3D structures. The application to RNA systems bridges the information gap between the growing mass of RNA sequence data and the relatively limited number of available 3D structures. The new RNA threading method is demonstrated on a tRNA model system because sufficient representative 3D structures have experimentally been elucidated and deposited in the public databases. Nevertheless, the method is in principle transferable on all other RNA species. Algorithms are developed that decompose these template structures into their secondary structure elements and gather this information in a specific template database. The best template is chosen with public alignment and secondary structure prediction tools which are integrated in the RNA modeling module. The structural information gathered from the template and the best alignment is combined to establish a comprehensive 3D model of the query sequence. A range of complete tRNA structures has successfully been modeled with the RNA threading method. The prototype module visualizes the models and provides convenient access to the proposed 3D structures. Therefore, the method could give new insight into a variety of RNA systems which in the recent years have become increasingly important as potential new pharmaceutical agents.
How Does a Protein Work?
(2003)
Decomposition of the high dimensional conformational space of bio-molecules into metastable subsets is used for data reduction of long molecular trajectories in order to facilitate chemical analysis and to improve convergence of simulations within these subsets. The metastability is identified by the Perron-cluster cluster analysis of a Markov process that generates the thermodynamic distribution. A necessary prerequisite of this analysis is the discretization of the conformational space. A combinatorial approach via discretization of each degree of freedom will end in the so called ''curse of dimension''. In the following paper we analyze Hybrid Monte Carlo simulations of small, drug-like biomolecules and focus on the dihedral degrees of freedom as indicators of conformational changes. To avoid the ''curse of dimension'', the projection of the underlying Markov operator on each dihedral is analyzed according to its metastability. In each decomposition step of a recursive procedure, those significant dihedrals, which indicate high metastability, are used for further decomposition. The procedure is introduced as part of a hierarchical protocol of simulations at different temperatures. The convergence of simulations within metastable subsets is used as an ''a posteriori'' criterion for a successful identification of metastability. All results are presented with the visualization program AmiraMol.
A hybrid Monte Carlo method with adaptive temperature choice is presented, which exactly generates the distribution of a mixed-canonical ensemble composed of two canonical ensembles at low and high temperature. The analysis of resulting Markov chains with the reweighting technique shows an efficient sampling of the canonical distribution at low temperature, whereas the high temperature component facilitates conformational transitions, which allows shorter simulation times. \\The algorithm was tested by comparing analytical and numerical results for the small n-butane molecule before simulations were performed for a triribonucleotide. Sampling the complex multi-minima energy landscape of these small RNA segments, we observed enforced crossing of energy barriers.
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.