Peter A. Kollman

We describe here a general Amber force field (GAFF) for organic molecules. GAFF is designed to be compatible with existing Amber force fields for proteins and nucleic acids, and has parameters for most organic and pharmaceutical molecules that are composed of H, C, N, O, S, P, and halogens. It uses a simple functional form and a limited number of atom types, but incorporates both empirical and heuristic models to estimate force constants and partial atomic charges. The performance of GAFF in test cases is encouraging. In test I, 74 crystallographic structures were compared to GAFF minimized structures, with a root-mean-square displacement of 0.26 A, which is comparable to that of the Tripos 5.2 force field (0.25 A) and better than those of MMFF 94 and CHARMm (0.47 and 0.44 A, respectively). In test II, gas phase minimizations were performed on 22 nucleic acid base pairs, and the minimized structures and intermolecular energies were compared to MP2/6-31G* results. The RMS of displacements and relative energies were 0.25 A and 1.2 kcal/mol, respectively. These data are comparable to results from Parm99/RESP (0.16 A and 1.18 kcal/mol, respectively), which were parameterized to these base pairs. Test III looked at the relative energies of 71 conformational pairs that were used in development of the Parm99 force field. The RMS error in relative energies (compared to experiment) is about 0.5 kcal/mol. GAFF can be applied to wide range of molecules in an automatic fashion, making it suitable for rational drug design and database searching.

Abstract: We present the derivation of a new molecular mechanical force field for simulating the structures, conformational energies, and interaction energies of proteins, nucleic acids, and many related organic molecules in condensed phases. This effective two-body force field is the successor to the Weiner et al. force field and was developed with some of the same philosophies, such as the use of a simple diagonal potential function and electrostatic potential fit atom centered charges. The need for a 10-12 function for representing hydrogen bonds is no longer necessary due to the improved performance of the new charge model and new van der Waals parameters. These new charges are determined using a 6-31G * basis set and restrained electrostatic potential (RESP) fitting and have been shown to reproduce interaction energies, free energies of solvation, and conformational energies of simple small molecules to a good degree of accuracy. Furthermore, the new RESP charges exhibit less variability as a function of the molecular conformation used in the charge determination. The new van der Waals parameters have been derived from liquid simulations and include hydrogen parameters which take into account the effects of any geminal electronegative atoms. The bonded parameters developed by Weiner et al. were modified as necessary to reproduce experimental vibrational frequencies and structures. Most of the simple dihedral parameters have been retained from Weiner et al., but a complex set of 4 and yj parameters which do a good job of reproducing the energies of the low-energy conformations of glycyl and alanyl dipeptides has been developed for the peptide backbone.

ADVERTISEMENT RETURN TO ISSUEPREVArticleNEXTA well-behaved electrostatic potential based method using charge restraints for deriving atomic charges: the RESP modelChristopher I. Bayly, Piotr Cieplak, Wendy Cornell, and Peter A. KollmanCite this: J. Phys. Chem. 1993, 97, 40, 10269–10280Publication Date (Print):October 1, 1993Publication History Published online1 May 2002Published inissue 1 October 1993https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/j100142a004https://doi.org/10.1021/j100142a004research-articleACS PublicationsRequest reuse permissionsArticle Views12411Altmetric-Citations6126LEARN ABOUT THESE METRICSArticle Views are the COUNTER-compliant sum of full text article downloads since November 2008 (both PDF and HTML) across all institutions and individuals. These metrics are regularly updated to reflect usage leading up to the last few days.Citations are the number of other articles citing this article, calculated by Crossref and updated daily. Find more information about Crossref citation counts.The Altmetric Attention Score is a quantitative measure of the attention that a research article has received online. Clicking on the donut icon will load a page at altmetric.com with additional details about the score and the social media presence for the given article. Find more information on the Altmetric Attention Score and how the score is calculated. Share Add toView InAdd Full Text with ReferenceAdd Description ExportRISCitationCitation and abstractCitation and referencesMore Options Share onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InRedditEmail Other access options Get e-Alerts

Abstract An analytical algorithm, called SETTLE, for resetting the positions and velocities to satisfy the holonomic constraints on the rigid water model is presented. This method is still based on the Cartesian coordinate system and can be used in place of SHAKE and RATTLE. We implemented this algorithm in the SPASMS package of molecular mechanics and dynamics. Several series of molecular dynamics simulations were carried out to examine the performance of the new algorithm in comparison with the original RATTLE method. It was found that SETTLE is of higher accuracy and is faster than RATTLE with reasonable tolerances by three to nine times on a scalar machine. Furthermore, the performance improvement ranged from factors of 26 to 98 on a vector machine since the method presented is not iterative. © 1992 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Abstract The Weighted Histogram Analysis Method (WHAM), an extension of Ferrenberg and Swendsen's Multiple Histogram Technique, has been applied for the first time on complex biomolecular Hamiltonians. The method is presented here as an extension of the Umbrella Sampling method for free‐energy and Potential of Mean Force calculations. This algorithm possesses the following advantages over methods that are currently employed: (1) It provides a built‐in estimate of sampling errors thereby yielding objective estimates of the optimal location and length of additional simulations needed to achieve a desired level of precision; (2) it yields the “best” value of free energies by taking into account all the simulations so as to minimize the statistical errors; (3) in addition to optimizing the links between simulations, it also allows multiple overlaps of probability distributions for obtaining better estimates of the free‐energy differences. By recasting the Ferrenberg–Swendsen Multiple Histogram equations in a form suitable for molecular mechanics type Hamiltonians, we have demonstrated the feasibility and robustness of this method by applying it to a test problem of the generation of the Potential of Mean Force profile of the pseudorotation phase angle of the sugar ring in deoxyadenosine. © 1992 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.