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In this paper, we investigate the interconversion processes of the major flame retardant -- 1,2,5,6,9,10-hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD) -- by the means of statistical thermodynamics based on classical force-fields. Three ideas will be presented. First, the application of classical hybrid Monte-Carlo simulations for quantum mechanical processes will be justified. Second, the problem of insufficient convergence properties of hybrid Monte-Carlo methods for the generation of low temperature canonical ensembles will be solved by an interpolation approach. Furthermore, it will be shown how free energy differences can be used for a rate matrix computation. The results of our numerical simulations will be compared to experimental results.
A hands-off linear interaction energy approach to binding mode and affinity estimation of estrogens
(2013)
A conventional by hand construction and parameterization of a polymer model for the purpose of molecular simulations can quickly become very workintensive and time-consuming. Using the example of polyglycerol, I present a polymer decompostion strategy yielding a set of five monomeric residues that are convenient for an instantaneous assembly and subsequent force field simulation of a polyglycerol polymer model. Force field parameters have been developed in accordance with the classical Amber force field. Partial charges of each unit were fitted to the electrostatic potential using quantumchemical methods and slightly modified in order to guarantee a neutral total polymer charge. In contrast to similarly constructed models of amino acid and nucleotide sequences, the glycerol building blocks may yield an arbitrary degree of bifurcations depending on the underlying probabilistic model. The iterative development of the overall structure as well as the relation of linear to branching units is controlled by a simple Markov model which is presented with few algorithmic details. The resulting polymer is highly suitable for classical explicit water molecular dynamics simulations on the atomistic level after a structural relaxation step. Moreover, the decomposition strategy presented here can easily be adopted to many other (co)polymers.
The antiepileptic drug carbamazepine (CBZ) and its main metabolites carbamazepine-10,11-epoxide (EP-CBZ) and 10,11-dihydro-10,11-dihydroxy-carbamazepine (DiOH-CBZ) were chosen as test substances to assess chronic toxicity on the non-biting midge Chironomus riparius. All three substances were tested in a 40-day sediment full life cycle test (according to OECD 233) in which mortality, emergence, fertility, and clutch size were evaluated. In addition, these parameters were integrated into the population growth rate to reveal population relevant effects. With an LC50 of 0.203 mg/kg (time-weighted mean), the metabolite EP-CBZ was significantly more toxic than the parent substance CBZ (LC50: 1.11 mg/kg). Especially mortality, emergence, and fertility showed to be sensitive parameters under the exposure to CBZ and EP-CBZ. By using classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, the binding of CBZ to the ecdysone receptor was investigated as one possible mode of action but showed to be unlikely. The second metabolite DiOH-CBZ did not show any effects within the tested concentration rage (0.171 – 1.22 mg/kg). Even though CBZ was less toxic compared to EP-CBZ, CBZ is found in the environment at much higher concentrations and causes therefore a higher potential risk for sediment dwelling organisms compared to its metabolites. Nevertheless, the current study illustrates the importance of including commonly found metabolites into the risk assessment of parent substances.
The simulation data has been produced by Vedat Durmaz, Peggy Sabri and Marco Reidelbach inside the "Computational Molecular Design" Group headed by Marcus Weber at Zuse-Institut Berlin, Takustr. 7, D-14195 Berlin, Germany.
The file contains classical simulation data for different fentanyl derivates in the MOR binding pocket at different pHs. It also includes instruction files for quantum-chemical pKa-value estimations and a description of how we derived the pKa-values from the Gaussian09 log-files.