Single molecule simulations

The freedom to vary < ) and i so extensively—even if exaggerated here owing to the absence of other molecules—renders cellulose fragments such as an octamer, surprisingly flexible. Cellulose is generally considered to be a stiff molecule, but at least single-molecule simulations in vacuum at 400 K show it to have considerable internal mobility. The range of conformations that result from this mobility are quite apparent when the molecular shape is... 

How Biomolecular Motors Work Synergy Between Single Molecule Experiments and Single Molecule Simulations... 

The above overview has tried to show how single molecule experiments and single molecule simulations act in a complementary fashion. For FqFi-ATP synthase and many molecular motors, such a synergy can be expected to continue to aid in our understanding of these wonderful machines. 

Experimental techniques based on the application of mechanical forces to single molecules in small assemblies have been applied to study the binding properties of biomolecules and their response to external mechanical manipulations. Among such techniques are atomic force microscopy (AFM), optical tweezers, biomembrane force probe, and surface force apparatus experiments (Binning et al., 1986 Block and Svoboda, 1994 Evans et ah, 1995 Israelachvili, 1992). These techniques have inspired us and others (see also the chapters by Eichinger et al. and by Hermans et al. in this volume) to adopt a similar approach for the study of biomolecules by means of computer simulations. 

Abstract. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of proteins provide descriptions of atomic motions, which allow to relate observable properties of proteins to microscopic processes. Unfortunately, such MD simulations require an enormous amount of computer time and, therefore, are limited to time scales of nanoseconds. We describe first a fast multiple time step structure adapted multipole method (FA-MUSAMM) to speed up the evaluation of the computationally most demanding Coulomb interactions in solvated protein models, secondly an application of this method aiming at a microscopic understanding of single molecule atomic force microscopy experiments, and, thirdly, a new method to predict slow conformational motions at microsecond time scales. 

As an example for an efficient yet quite accurate approximation, in the first part of our contribution we describe a combination of a structure adapted multipole method with a multiple time step scheme (FAMUSAMM — fast multistep structure adapted multipole method) and evaluate its performance. In the second part we present, as a recent application of this method, an MD study of a ligand-receptor unbinding process enforced by single molecule atomic force microscopy. Through comparison of computed unbinding forces with experimental data we evaluate the quality of the simulations. The third part sketches, as a perspective, one way to drastically extend accessible time scales if one restricts oneself to the study of conformational transitions, which arc ubiquitous in proteins and are the elementary steps of many functional conformational motions. 

That simulation study [49] aimed at a microscopic interpretation of single molecule atomic force microscope (AFM) experiments [50], in which unbinding forces between individual protein-ligand complexes have been m( asured... 

The simulation of molecules in solution can be broken down into two categories. The first is a list of elfects that are not defined for a single molecule, such as diffusion rates. These types of effects require modeling the bulk liquid as discussed in Chapters 7 and 39. The other type of effect is a solvation effect, which is a change in the molecular behavior due to the presence of a solvent. This chapter addresses this second type of effect. 

Btamp/e Conformations of molecules like n-decane can be globally characterized by the end-to-end distance, R. In a comparison of single-molecule Brownian (Langevin) dynamics to molecular dynamics, the average end-to-end distance for n-decane from a 600 ps single-molecule Langevin dynamics run was almost identical to results from 19 ps of a 27-molecule molecular dynamics run. Both simulations were at 481K the time step and friction coeffi-... 

Simulating the dynamical properties of single molecules is all very interesting, but molecular dynamics (MD) was originally developed to study systems of particles... 

In contrast to the single molecule case, Monte Carlo methods tend to be rather less efficient than molecular dynamics in sampling phase space for a bulk fluid. Consequently, most of the bulk simulations of liquid crystals described in Sect. 5.1 use molecular dynamics simulation methods. 

Monatomic Gold Wires with Single Molecules An Ab Initio Simulation. Physical Review Letters, 89, 186402-1-186402-4. 

Fig. 2. Illustration of the definitions of conformational coordinate 7Zn, e.g., 7Zn = ri, r2,. .., rn. The conformational distribution s (7U1) is sampled for the single molecule in the absence of interactions with solvent by suitable simulation procedures using coordinates appropriate for those procedures. The normalization adopted in this development is/sf (7Zn) dn1Z = V, the volume of the system. Thus, the conformational average that corresponds to adding the second brackets in going from Eq. (4) to Eq. (3) is evaluated with the distribution function sf (7Zn) = V.

Even if we consider a single solvent, e g., water, at a single temperature, say 298K, depends on the solute and in fact on the coordinate of the solute which is under consideration, and we cannot take xF as a constant. Nevertheless, in the absence of a molecular dynamics simulation for the solute motion of interest, XF for polar solvents like water is often approximated by the Debye model. In this model, the dielectric polarization of the solvent relaxes as a single exponential with a relaxation time equal to the rotational (i.e., reorientational) relaxation time of a single molecule, which is called Tp) or the Debye time [32, 347], The Debye time may be associated with the relaxation of the transverse component of the polarization field. However the solvent fluctuations and frictional relaxation occur on a faster scale given by [348,349]... 

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