We describe the development, current features, and some directions for future development of the Amber package of computer programs. This package evolved from a program that was constructed in the late 1970s to do Assisted Model Building with Energy Refinement, and now contains a group of programs embodying a number of powerful tools of modern computational chemistry, focused on molecular dynamics and free energy calculations of proteins, nucleic acids, and carbohydrates.

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The Amber biomolecular simulation programs

CHARMM (Chemistry at HARvard Molecular Mechanics) is a highly versatile and widely used molecu- lar simulation program. It has been developed over the last three decades with a primary focus on molecules of bio- logical interest, including proteins, peptides, lipids, nucleic acids, carbohydrates, and small molecule ligands, as they occur in solution, crystals, and membrane environments. For the study of such systems, the program provides a large suite of computational tools that include numerous conformational and path sampling methods, free energy estima- tors, molecular minimization, dynamics, and analysis techniques, and model-building capabilities. The CHARMM program is applicable to problems involving a much broader class of many-particle systems. Calculations with CHARMM can be performed using a number of different energy functions and models, from mixed quantum mechanical-molecular mechanical force fields, to all-atom classical potential energy functions with explicit solvent and various boundary conditions, to implicit solvent and membrane models. The program has been ported to numer- ous platforms in both serial and parallel architectures. This article provides an overview of the program as it exists today with an emphasis on developments since the publication of the original CHARMM article in 1983.

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CHARMM: the biomolecular simulation program.

Publisher Summary The chapter focuses on a general description of the force fields that are most commonly used at present, and it gives an indication of the directions of current research that may yield better functions in the near future. After a brief survey of current models, mostly generated during the 1990s, the focus of the chapter is on the general directions the field is taking in developing new models. The most commonly used protein force fields incorporate a relatively simple potential energy function: The emphasis is on the use of continuum methods to model the electrostatic effects of hydration and the introduction of polarizability to model the electronic response to changes in the environment. Some of the history and performance of widely used protein force fields based on an equation on simplest potential energy function or closely related equations are reviewed. The chapter outlines some promising developments that go beyond this, primarily by altering the way electrostatic interactions are treated. The use of atomic multipoles and off-center charge distributions, as well as attempts to incorporate electronic polarizability, are also discussed in the chapter.

https://dasher.wustl.edu/ponder/papers/advprotchem-66-27-03.pdf

Force fields for protein simulations

Molecular force fields have been approaching a generational transition over the past several years, moving away from well-established and well-tuned, but intrinsically limited, fixed point charge models toward more intricate and expensive polarizable models that should allow more accurate description of molecular properties. The recently introduced AMOEBA force field is a leading publicly available example of this next generation of theoretical model, but to date, it has only received relatively limited validation, which we address here. We show that the AMOEBA force field is in fact a significant improvement over fixed charge models for small molecule structural and thermodynamic observables in particular, although further fine-tuning is necessary to describe solvation free energies of drug-like small molecules, dynamical properties away from ambient conditions, and possible improvements in aromatic interactions. State of the art electronic structure calculations reveal generally very good agreement with...

/pdf/current-status-of-the-amoeba-polarizable-force-field-5adk1teb7t.pdf

Current Status of the AMOEBA Polarizable Force Field

A hierarchy of three models for combined quantum mechanical (QM) and molecular mechanical (MM) approaches is presented. They simplify the QM description of large molecules by reducing it to the electronically important fragment which interacts with the molecular mechanically treated remainder of the molecule. In the simplest model A, the QM fragments are only mechanically embedded in their MM environment. The more refined models B and C include a quantum mechanical treatment of electrostatic interactions between the fragments and a semiclassical description of polarization. The implementation of models A-C for MNDO type wavefunctions and the MM3 force field is outlined. Selected applications in organic chemistry are discussed, addressing the ability of the proposed models to reproduce substituent effects (MM) on chemical structure and reactivity (QM). These applications include protonations, deprotonations, hydride transfer reactions, nucleophilic additions, and nucleophilic ring cleavage reactions.

B.T. Thole

Papers

Molecular polarizabilities calculated with a modified dipole interaction