Typical experimental setups for molecular systems must deal with a certain coupling to the external environment, that is, the system is open and exchanges mass, momentum, and energy with its surroundings. Instead, standard molecular simulations are mostly performed using periodic boundary conditions with a constant number of molecules. In this review, we summarize major development of simulation methodologies, which, contrary to standard techniques, open up the boundaries of a molecular system and allow for exchange of energy and matter with the environment, in and out of equilibrium.
COBISS.SI-ID: 6173722
The intriguing physics of water transport through carbon nanotubes (CNTs) has motivated numerous studies, reporting flow rates higher than those estimated by continuum models. The quantification of water transport in CNTs remains unresolved, however, with flow rates reported by different experiments and simulations having discrepancies of over three orders of magnitude. Employing a combination of computationally intensive molecular dynamics and continuum fluid dynamics simulations together with analytical fluctuating hydrodynamics calculations, we have reexamined the effects of the CNT phonons on water transport through CNTs. We find that phonon CNT-oscillations induce a constant-frequency oscillation of water velocity, consistent with the previously published results. However, the new results show only a small effect of phonon modes on water flow rates. In fact, we estimate an order-of-magnitude lower water diffusion enhancement that is also independent of phonon modes.
COBISS.SI-ID: 6285594
While densely packed DNA arrays are known to exhibit hexagonal and orthorhombic local packings, the detailed mechanism governing the associated phase transition remains rather elusive. Furthermore, at high densities the atomistic resolution is paramount to properly account for fine details, encompassing the DNA molecular order, the contingent ordering of counterions and the induced molecular ordering of the bathing solvent, bringing together electrostatic, steric, thermal and direct hydrogen-bonding interactions, resulting in the observed osmotic equation of state. We perform a multiscale simulation of dense DNA arrays by enclosing a set of 16 atomistically resolved DNA molecules within a semi-permeable membrane, allowing the passage of water and salt ions, and thus mimicking the behavior of DNA arrays subjected to external osmotic stress in a bathing solution of monovalent salt and multivalent counterions. By varying the DNA density, local packing symmetry, and counterion type, we obtain osmotic equation of state together with the hexagonal-orthorhombic phase transition, and full structural characterization of the DNA subphase in terms of its positional and angular orientational fluctuations, counterion distributions, and the solvent local dielectric response profile with its order parameters that allow us to identify the hydration force as the primary interaction mechanism at high DNA densities.
COBISS.SI-ID: 3105124
We propose the use of the Navier–Stokes equations subject to partial slip boundary conditions to simulate water flows in Carbon NanoTube (CNT) membranes. The finite volume discretizations of the Navier–Stokes equations are combined with slip lengths extracted from molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to predict the pressure losses at the CNT entrance as well as the enhancement of the flow rate in the CNT. The flow quantities calculated from the present hybrid approach are in excellent agreement with pure MD results while they are obtained at a fraction of the computational cost. The method enables simulations of system sizes and times well beyond the present capabilities of MD simulations. Our simulations provide an asymptotic flow rate enhancement and indicate that the pressure losses at the CNT ends can be reduced by reducing their curvature. More importantly, our results suggest that flows at nanoscale channels can be described by continuum solvers with proper boundary conditions that reflect the molecular interactions of the liquid with the walls of the nanochannel.
COBISS.SI-ID: 5529626
To perform computationally efficient concurrent multiscale simulations of biological macromolecules in solution, where the all-atom (AT) models are coupled to supramolecular coarse-grained (SCG) solvent models, previous studies resorted to modified AT water models, such as the bundled-simple point charge (SPC) models, that use semiharmonic springs to restrict the relative movement of water molecules within a cluster. Those models can have a significant impact on the simulated biomolecules and can lead, for example, to a partial unfolding of a protein. In this work, we employ the recently developed alternative approach with a dynamical clustering algorithm, SWINGER, which enables a direct coupling of original unmodified AT and SCG water models. We perform an adaptive resolution molecular dynamics simulation of a Trp-Cage miniprotein in multiscale water, where the standard SPC water model is interfaced with the widely used MARTINI SCG model, and demonstrate that, compared to the corresponding full-blown AT simulations, the structural and dynamic properties of the solvated protein and surrounding solvent are well reproduced by our approach.
COBISS.SI-ID: 6331418
A main-chain nematic polymer melt/solution exhibits macroscopic orientational order of main polymer chains, i.e., a preferred (nematic) direction. It has long been known that in such polymeric liquid crystals spatial density/concentration variations and distortions of the nematic direction are coupled, obeying a vectorial continuity constraint whose rigidity increases with chain length. Its vectorial nature precludes the application to flexible chains, where backfolds (hairpins) are present and apolar nematic symmetry is manifest, which has been its puzzling feature from the beginning. We now establish a description of the splay--density coupling in the case of arbitrary backfolding, devising a continuity constraint for the "recovered" polar order of the chain tangents and introducing hairpins as its new type of sources. Performing detailed Monte Carlo simulations of nematic monodomain melts of "soft" worm-like chains with variable length and flexibility, we show via their structure factors that the weakening of the coupling due to the backfolding can be consistently quantified on the macroscopic level.
COBISS.SI-ID: 39561989
We simulate the melt and solution of star polymers under shear flow and study the rotations of single molecules in both setups. The rotational angular velocity is computed, using the Eckart frame formalism. The Eckart frame is an internal translating and rotating coordinate system, in which the coupling between rotational and vibrational degrees of freedom is minimal in equilibrium. The obtained Eckart’s angular velocity matches well the characteristic frequency of tank-treading rotations that is obtained from the autocorrelation function of the position of monomers. On the other hand, both results differ significantly from the apparent angular velocity, which is calculated from the angular momentum and inertia tensor of each molecule. The standard formula, which is valid only for the rigid bodies, is thus inapplicable for the description of rotations in soft matter.
COBISS.SI-ID: 6214426
We present a multiscale simulation of a DNA molecule in 1 M NaCl salt solution environment, employing the adaptive resolution simulation approach that allows the solvent molecules, i.e., water and ions, to change their resolution from atomistic to coarse-grained and vice versa adaptively on-the-fly. The region of high resolution moves together with the DNA center-of-mass so that the DNA itself is always modeled at high resolution. We show that our multiscale simulations yield a stable DNA–solution system, with statistical properties similar to those produced by the conventional all-atom molecular dynamics simulation. Special attention is given to the collective properties, such as the dielectric constant, as they provide a sensitive quality measure of our multiscale approach.
COBISS.SI-ID: 5756698
Discovery of potentially deleterious sequence variants is important and has wide implications for research and generation of new hypotheses in human and veterinary medicine, and drug discovery. The GenProBiS web server maps sequence variants to protein structures from the Protein Data Bank (PDB), and further to protein–protein, protein–nucleic acid, protein–compound, and protein–metal ion binding sites. The concept of a protein–compound binding site is understood in the broadest sense, which includes glycosylation and other post-translational modification sites. Binding sites were defined by local structural comparisons of whole protein structures using the Protein Binding Sites (ProBiS) algorithm and transposition of ligands from the similar binding sites found to the query protein using the ProBiS-ligands approach with new improvements introduced in GenProBiS. Binding site surfaces were generated as three-dimensional grids encompassing the space occupied by predicted ligands. The server allows intuitive visual exploration of comprehensively mapped variants, such as human somatic mis-sense mutations related to cancer and non-synonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms from 21 species, within the predicted binding sites regions for about 80 000 PDB protein structures using fast WebGL graphics. The GenProBiS web server is open and free to all users at http://genprobis.insilab.org.
COBISS.SI-ID: 3897736
Elevated expression of the immunoproteasome has been associated with autoimmune diseases, inflammatory diseases, and various types of cancer. Selective inhibitors of the immunoproteasome are not only scarce, but also almost entirely restricted to peptide-based compounds. Herein, we describe nonpeptidic reversible inhibitors that selectively block the chymotrypsin-like (ß5i) subunit of the human immunoproteasome in the low micromolar range. The most potent of the reversibly acting compounds were then converted into covalent, irreversible, nonpeptidic inhibitors that retained selectivity for the ß5i subunit. In addition, these inhibitors discriminate between the immunoproteasome and the constitutive proteasome in cell-based assays. Along with their lack of cytotoxicity, these data point to these nonpeptidic compounds being suitable for further investigation as ß5i-selective probes for possible application in noncancer diseases related to the immunoproteasome.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4050545