Exploring Biomolecular Conformational Dynamics with Polarizable Force Field AMOEBA and Enhanced Sampling Method Milestoning.

Abstract

Conformational dynamics play a crucial role in determining the behavior of the biomolecules. Polarizable force fields, such as AMOEBA, can accurately capture electrostatic interactions underlying the conformational space. However, applying a polarizable force field in molecular dynamics (MD) simulations can be computationally expensive, especially in studying long-time-scale dynamics. To overcome this challenge, we incorporated the AMOEBA potential with Milestoning, an enhanced sampling method in this work. This integration allows us to efficiently sample the rare and important conformational states of a biomolecule by using many short and independent molecular dynamics trajectories with the AMOEBA force field. We applied this method to investigate the conformational dynamics of alanine dipeptide, DNA, and RNA A-B form conversion. Well-converged thermodynamic and kinetic properties were obtained, including the free energy difference, mean first passage time, and critical transitions between states. Our results demonstrate the power of integrating polarizable force fields with enhanced sampling methods in quantifying the thermodynamic and kinetic properties of biomolecules at the atomic level.