Park Soon Woo, Choi Moon-Ki, Lee Byung Ho, Seo Sangjae, Kim Woo Kyun, Kim Moon Ki
School of Mechanical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Republic of Korea.
Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA.
Protein Sci. 2025 Mar;34(3):e70073. doi: 10.1002/pro.70073.
Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation is an important tool for understanding protein dynamics and the thermodynamic properties of proteins. However, due to the high computational cost of MD simulations, it is still challenging to explore a wide conformational space. To solve this problem, a variety of accelerated MD (aMD) schemes have been proposed over the past few decades. The bond-boost method (BBM) is one of such aMD schemes, which expedites escape events from energy basins by adding a bias potential based on changes in bond length. In this paper, we present a new methodology based on the BBM for accelerating the conformational transition of proteins. In our modified BBM, the bias potential is constructed using the dihedral angle and hydrogen bond, which are more suitable variables to monitor the conformational change in proteins. Additionally, we have developed an efficient algorithm compatible with the Large-scale Atomic/Molecular Massively Parallel Simulator (LAMMPS) package. The method is validated with the conformational change of ribose binding protein and adenylate kinase by comparing the conventional and accelerated MD simulation results. Based on the aMD results, the characteristics of the proteins are investigated by monitoring the conformational transition pathways. Moreover, the free energy landscape calculated using umbrella sampling confirms all the states identified by the aMD simulation are the free energy minima, and the system makes transitions following the path indicated by the free energy landscape. Our efficient approach is expected to play a key role in investigating transition pathways in a wide range of protein simulations.
分子动力学(MD)模拟是理解蛋白质动力学和蛋白质热力学性质的重要工具。然而,由于MD模拟的计算成本很高,探索广阔的构象空间仍然具有挑战性。为了解决这个问题,在过去几十年里提出了各种加速分子动力学(aMD)方案。键增强方法(BBM)就是这样一种aMD方案,它通过基于键长变化添加一个偏置势来加速从能量盆地的逃逸事件。在本文中,我们提出了一种基于BBM的新方法来加速蛋白质的构象转变。在我们改进的BBM中,偏置势是使用二面角和氢键构建的,它们是更适合监测蛋白质构象变化的变量。此外,我们开发了一种与大规模原子/分子大规模并行模拟器(LAMMPS)软件包兼容的高效算法。通过比较传统MD模拟结果和加速MD模拟结果,用核糖结合蛋白和腺苷酸激酶的构象变化验证了该方法。基于aMD结果,通过监测构象转变途径研究了蛋白质的特性。此外,使用伞形采样计算的自由能景观证实了aMD模拟识别的所有状态都是自由能最小值,并且系统沿着自由能景观指示的路径进行转变。我们的高效方法有望在广泛的蛋白质模拟中研究转变途径方面发挥关键作用。