Staggered Mesh Ewald: An Extension of the Smooth Particle-Mesh Ewald Method Adding Great Versatility

We draw on an old technique for improving the accuracy of mesh-based field calculations to extend the popular Smooth Particle Mesh Ewald (SPME) algorithm as the Staggered Mesh Ewald (StME) algorithm. StME improves the accuracy of computed forces by up to 1.2 orders of magnitude and also reduces the drift in system momentum inherent in the SPME method by averaging the results of two separate reciprocal space calculations. StME can use charge mesh spacings roughly 1.5× larger than SPME to obtain comparable levels of accuracy; the one mesh in an SPME calculation can therefore be replaced with two separate meshes, each less than one third of the original size. Coarsening the charge mesh can be balanced with reductions in the direct space cutoff to optimize performance: the efficiency of StME rivals or exceeds that of SPME calculations with similarly optimized parameters. StME may also offer advantages for parallel molecular dynamics simulations because it permits the use of coarser meshes without requiring higher orders of charge interpolation and also because the two reciprocal space calculations can be run independently if that is most suitable for the machine architecture. We are planning other improvements to the standard SPME algorithm, and anticipate that StME will work synergistically will all of them to dramatically improve the efficiency and parallel scaling of molecular simulations

A Vulnerability in Popular Molecular Dynamics Packages Concerning Langevin and Andersen Dynamics

We report a serious problem associated with a number of current implementations of Andersen and Langevin dynamics algorithms. When long simulations are run in many segments, it is sometimes possible to have a repeating sequence of pseudorandom numbers enter the calcuation. We show that, if the sequence repeats rapidly, the resulting artifacts can quickly denature biomolecules and are then easily detectable. However, if the sequence repeats less frequently, the artifacts become subtle and easily overlooked. We derive a formula for the underlying cause of artifacts in the case of the Langevin thermostat, and find it vanishes slowly as the inverse square root of the number of time steps per simulation segment. Numerous examples of simulation artifacts are presented, including dissociation of a tetrameric protein after 110 ns of dynamics, reductions in atomic fluctuations for a small protein in implicit solvent, altered thermodynamic properties of a box of water molecules, and changes in the transition free energies between dihedral angle conformations. Finally, in the case of strong thermocoupling, we link the observed artifacts to previous work in nonlinear dynamics and show that it is possible to drive a 20-residue, implicitly solvated protein into periodic trajectories if the thermostat is not used properly. Our findings should help other investigators re-evaluate simulations that may have been corrupted and obtain more accurate results

Diagnostic cross-linking of paired cysteine pairs demonstrates homologous structures for two chemoreceptor domains with low sequence identity

Hundreds of bacterial chemoreceptors from many species have periplasmic, ligand-recognition domains of approximately the same size, but little or no sequence identity. The only structure determined is for the periplasmic domain of chemoreceptor Tar from Salmonella and Escherichia coli. Do sequence-divergent but similarly sized chemoreceptor periplasmic domains have related structures? We addressed this issue for the periplasmic domain of chemoreceptor TrgE from E. coli, which has a low level of sequence similarity to Tar, by combining homology modeling and diagnostic cross-linking between pairs of introduced cysteines. A homology model of the TrgE domain was created using the homodimeric, four-helix bundle structure of the TarS domain from Salmonella. In this model, we chose four pairs of positions at which introduced cysteines would be sufficiently close to form disulfides across each of four different helical interfaces. For each pair we chose a second pair, in which one cysteine of the original pair was shifted by one position around the helix and thus would be less favorably placed for disulfide formation. We created genes coding for proteins containing four such pairs of cysteine pairs and investigated disulfide formation in vivo as well as functional consequences of the substitutions and disulfides between neighboring helices. Results of the experimental tests provided strong support for the accuracy of the model, indicating that the TrgE periplasmic domain is very similar to the TarS domain. Diagnostic cross-linking of paired pairs of introduced cysteines could be applied generally as a stringent test of homology models