Molecular energy minimization

Bernhard R. Brooks, Robert E. Bruccoleri, Barry D. Olafson, David J. States, S. Swaminathan, and Martin Karplus. CHARMM A program for macro-molecular energy, minimization, and dynamics calculations. J. Comp. Chem., 4(2) 187-217, 1983. 

Fig. 1. A schematic depiction of the parameters involved in simultaneous inter and intia molecular energy minimization of a polymer crystal The repeat unit internal coordinates are designated by v, the h advance angle and distance by a and d, the chain setting angle by 6, (not shown) and the lattice parameters by a, b, ot, P, y...

Quenched dynamics is a combination of high temperature molecular dynamics and energy minimization. This process determines the energy distribution of con formational families produced during molecular dynamics trajectories. To provide a better estimate of conformations, you should combine quenched dynamics with simulated annealing. 

Model optimization is a further refinement of the secondary and tertiary structure. At a minimum, a molecular mechanics energy minimization is done. Often, molecular dynamics or simulated annealing are used. These are frequently chosen to search the region of conformational space relatively close to the starting structure. For marginal cases, this step is very important and larger simulations should be run. 

Chem3D uses a MM2 force field that has been extended to cover the full periodic table with the exception of the /block elements. Unknown parameters will be estimated by the program and a message generated to inform the user of this. MM2 can be used for both energy minimization and molecular dynamics calculations. The user can add custom atom types or alter the parameters used... 

Once the 3D strucmre of a molecule and all the parameters required for the atomic and molecular connectivities are known, the energy of the system can be calculated via Eqs. (l)-(3). First derivatives of the energy with respect to position allow for determination of the forces acting on the atoms, information that is used in the energy minimization (see Chapter 4) or MD simulations (see Chapter 3). Second derivatives of the energy with respect to position can be used to calculate force constants acting on atoms, allowing the determination of vibrational spectra via nonnal mode analysis (see Chapter 8). 

JM Troyer, EE Cohen. Protein conformational landscapes Energy minimization and clustering of a long molecular dynamics trajectory. Proteins 23 97-110, 1995. 

M Levitt. Protein folding by constrained energy minimization and molecular dynamics. J Mol Biol 170 723-764, 1983. 

Molecular mechanics and electrostatics calculations have both played an important role in studying electron transfer proteins. Molecular mechanics calculations of these proteins use the same techniques (molecular dynamics, energy minimization) as for other proteins, although special consideration must be made in simulation conditions. 

Energy minimization methods that exploit information about the second derivative of the potential are quite effective in the structural refinement of proteins. That is, in the process of X-ray structural determination one sometimes obtains bad steric interactions that can easily be relaxed by a small number of energy minimization cycles. The type of relaxation that can be obtained by energy minimization procedures is illustrated in Fig. 4.4. In fact, one can combine the potential U r) with the function which is usually optimized in X-ray structure determination (the R factor ) and minimize the sum of these functions (Ref. 4) by a conjugated gradient method, thus satisfying both the X-ray electron density constraints and steric constraint dictated by the molecular potential surface. 

---