Constrained Unfolding of a Helical Peptide: Implicit versus Explicit Solvents

Hailey R Bureau, Dale R Merz, Eli Hershkovits, Stephen Quirk and Rigoberto Hernandez

PLOS ONE, 2015, vol. 10, issue 5, 1-19

Abstract: Steered Molecular Dynamics (SMD) has been seen to provide the potential of mean force (PMF) along a peptide unfolding pathway effectively but at significant computational cost, particularly in all-atom solvents. Adaptive steered molecular dynamics (ASMD) has been seen to provide a significant computational advantage by limiting the spread of the trajectories in a staged approach. The contraction of the trajectories at the end of each stage can be performed by taking a structure whose nonequilibrium work is closest to the Jarzynski average (in naive ASMD) or by relaxing the trajectories under a no-work condition (in full-relaxation ASMD—namely, FR-ASMD). Both approaches have been used to determine the energetics and hydrogen-bonding structure along the pathway for unfolding of a benchmark peptide initially constrained as an α-helix in a water environment. The energetics are quite different to those in vacuum, but are found to be similar between implicit and explicit solvents. Surprisingly, the hydrogen-bonding pathways are also similar in the implicit and explicit solvents despite the fact that the solvent contact plays an important role in opening the helix.

Date: 2015
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0127034

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0127034

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