A Polarizable Force-Field for Cholesterol and Sphingomyelin

A practical guide to biologically relevant molecular simulations with charge scaling for electronic polarization

Molecular simulations can elucidate atomistic-level mechanisms of key biological processes, which are often hardly accessible to experiment. However, the results of the simulations can only be as trustworthy as the underlying simulation model. In many of these processes, interactions between charged moieties play a critical role. Current empirical force fields tend to overestimate such interactions, often in a dramatic way, when polyvalent ions are involved. The source of this shortcoming is the missing electronic polarization in these models. Given the importance of such biomolecular systems, there is great interest in fixing this deficiency in a computationally inexpensive way without employing explicitly polarizable force fields. Here, we review the electronic continuum correction approach, which accounts for electronic polarization in a mean-field way, focusing on its charge scaling variant. We show that by pragmatically scaling only the charged molecular groups, we qualitatively improve the charge-charge interactions without extra computational costs and benefit from decades of force field development on biomolecular force fields.

A Polarizable Atomic Multipole-Based Force Field for Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Anionic Lipids

In all of the classical force fields, electrostatic interaction is simply treated and explicit electronic polarizability is neglected. The condensed-phase polarization, relative to the gas-phase charge distributions, is commonly accounted for in an average way by increasing the atomic charges, which remain fixed throughout simulations. Based on the lipid polarizable force field DMPC and following the same framework as Atomic Multipole Optimized Energetics for BiomoleculAr (AMOEBA) simulation, the present effort expands the force field to new anionic lipid models, in which the new lipids contain DMPG and POPS. The parameters are compatible with the AMOEBA force field, which includes water, ions, proteins, etc. The charge distribution of each atom is represented by the permanent atomic monopole, dipole and quadrupole moments, which are derived from the ab initio gas phase calculations. Many-body polarization including the inter- and intramolecular polarization is modeled in a consistent manner with distributed atomic polarizabilities. Molecular dynamics simulations of the two aqueous DMPG and POPS membrane bilayer systems, consisting of 72 lipids with water molecules, were then carried out to validate the force field parameters. Membrane width, area per lipid, volume per lipid, deuterium order parameters, electron density profile, electrostatic potential difference between the center of the bilayer and water are all calculated, and compared with limited experimental data.

An averaged polarizable potential for multiscale modeling in phospholipid membranes

A set of average atom-centered charges and polarizabilities has been developed for three types of phospholipids for use in polarizable embedding calculations. The lipids investigated are 1,2-dimyristoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine, 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine, and 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycerol-3-phospho-L-serine given their common use both in experimental and computational studies. The charges, and to a lesser extent the polarizabilities, are found to depend strongly on the molecular conformation of the lipids. Furthermore, the importance of explicit polarization is underlined for the description of larger assemblies of lipids, that is, membranes. In conclusion, we find that specially developed polarizable parameters are needed for embedding calculations in membranes, while common non-polarizable point-charge force fields usually perform well enough for structural and dynamical studies. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Force Field Development for Lipid Membrane Simulations

With the rapid development of computer power and wide availability of modelling software computer simulations of realistic models of lipid membranes, including their interactions with various molecular species, polypeptides and membrane proteins have become feasible for many research groups. The crucial issue of the reliability of such simulations is the quality of the force field, and many efforts, especially in the latest several years, have been devoted to parametrization and optimization of the force fields for biomembrane modelling. In this review, we give account of the recent development in this area, covering different classes of force fields, principles of the force field parametrization, comparison of the force fields, and their experimental validation. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Biosimulations edited by Ilpo Vattulainen and Tomasz Róg.

Molecular simulation of nonfacilitated membrane permeation

This is a review. Non-electrolytic compounds typically cross cell membranes by passive diffusion. The rate of permeation is dependent on the chemical properties of the solute and the composition of the lipid bilayer membrane. Predicting the permeability coefficient of a solute is important in pharmaceutical chemistry and toxicology. Molecular simulation has proven to be a valuable tool for modeling permeation of solutes through a lipid bilayer. In particular, the solubility-diffusion model has allowed for the quantitative calculation of permeability coefficients. The underlying theory and computational methods used to calculate membrane permeability are reviewed. We also discuss applications of these methods to examine the permeability of solutes and the effect of membrane composition on permeability. The application of coarse grain and polarizable models is discussed. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Membrane Proteins edited by J.C. Gumbart and Sergei Noskov.

Detailed comparison of deuterium quadrupole profiles between sphingomyelin and phosphatidylcholine bilayers

Lipid rafts are microdomains rich in sphingomyelin (SM) and cholesterol (Chol). The essential question is why natural lipid rafts prefer SM rather than saturated diacyl glycerophosphocholine, although both form ordered membranes with Chol in model systems. Hence in this study, we synthesized site-specifically deuterated 1-palmitoyl-2-stearoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholines that match the acyl chain length of stearoyl-SM (SSM), and compared their deuterium quadrupole coupling profiles in detail. The results suggest a deeper distribution of Chol in the SSM membranes, a lower entropic penalty upon accommodation of Chol in SSM membranes, and a higher thermal stability of acyl-chain orders in the SSM-Chol bilayers than in the 1-palmitoyl-2-stearoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine-Chol system at various Chol concentrations. The entropy effect and thermal stability should render SM a more preferred raft constituent than saturated diacyl glycerophosphocholine. Our data also demonstrate that the selective and comprehensive deuteration strategy is indispensable for accurate comparison of order profiles.

QM/MM studies of contemporary and novel membrane raft fluorescent probes

We have studied a number of contemporary and novel membrane probes, selected for their structural similarity to membrane raft components, in order to properly anchor themselves within a sphingolipid/cholesterol rich region. A QM/MM approach was adopted in order to understand the structural and electrostatic influences of fluorescence emission shifts of the probes in different lipid and solvation environments. The proposed modifications to the membrane probes have shown encouraging data relating not only to emission shifts within the membrane, but also their ability to anchor within a membrane raft domain and the stability to internalization within a membrane system.