Atomic force field FFsol for calculating molecular interactions in water environment

Abstract

Detailed calculations of protein interactions with explicitly considered water takes enormous computer time. The calculation becomes faster if water is considered implicitly (as a continuous media rather than as molecules); however, these calculations are much less precise, unless one uses an additional (and also volumes) computation of the solvent-accessible areas of protein atoms. The aim of our study was to obtain parameters for non-bonded atom-atom interactions for the case when water surrounding is considered implicitly and the solvent-accessible areas are not computed. Since the "in-vacuum" interactions of atoms are obtained from experimental structures of crystals and enthalpies of their sublimation, the "in-water" interactions of atoms must be corrected using solvation free energies of molecules, which can be obtained from the Henry constants. Taken 58 structures of molecular crystals and thermodynamic data on their sublimation and solubility, we obtained parameters for "in-water" attraction and repulsion of atoms typical of protein structures (H, C, N, O, S) in various covalently-bonded states, as well as parameters for electrostatic interactions. All necessary for calculations parameters of covalent interactions have been taken from the ENCAD force field, and partial charges of all atoms of separate molecules of a crystal have been obtained from quantum-mechanical calculations. The sought parameters of the "in-water" van der Waals and electrostatic interactions were optimized so as to achieve the best description of equilibrium crystal structures and their sublimation and solvation at the room temperature. With the optimized parameters, the average error in calculation of the effective cohesion energy of molecules in crystals was less than 10% both in the "in-vacuum" and "in-water" cases.