Monte Carlo multiple-minimum method

Conformational analysis sampling method MCMM Me (Monte Carlo Multiple Minimum)... 

Ripoll D R and H A Scheraga 1989. On the Multiple-Minimum Problem in the Conformational Anal of Polypeptides. IB. An Electrostatically Driven Monte Carlo Method Tests on met-Enkepha journal of Protein Chemistry 8 263-287. 

To overcome the limitations of the database search methods, conformational search methods were developed [95,96,109]. There are many such methods, exploiting different protein representations, objective function tenns, and optimization or enumeration algorithms. The search algorithms include the minimum perturbation method [97], molecular dynamics simulations [92,110,111], genetic algorithms [112], Monte Carlo and simulated annealing [113,114], multiple copy simultaneous search [115-117], self-consistent field optimization [118], and an enumeration based on the graph theory [119]. 

One of the ways of circumventing the problem of finding multiple energy minima of complex molecules is to turn to more sophisticated techniques that are capable of sampling phase space efficiently without the need to home in on particular minimum energy conformations. The two most useful techniques are molecular dynamics (MD) and the Monte Carlo (MC) method. Both approaches make use of the same types of potential functions used in molecular mechanics, but are designed to sample conformation space such that a Boltzmann distribution of states is generated. MC and MD techniques for molecular systems have been widely reviewed [11-14], and only the basics of the two methods are described below. 

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