Conserving energy during molecular dynamics simulations of water, proteins, and proteins in water

Abstract Molecular dynamics simulations have been carried out for a series of systems of increasing complexity including: pure water, a model polypeptide (α‐helical decaglycine) in vacuo, a protein (Pancreatic Trypsin Inhibitor, PTI) in vacuo, and a fully solvated protein (PTI in water). The equations of motion were integrated using Andersen's velocity version of the Verlet algorithm with internal contraints (the RATTLE algorithm). The accuracy with which the equations of motion are integrated has been analyzed for several different simulation conditions. The effects of various nonbonded interaction truncation schemes on the conservation of energy have been examined, including the use of atomic cutoffs, and (neutral group) residue cutoffs. The use of a smoothing function to eliminate the discontinuities in the potential at the cutoff leads to a significant improvement in the accuracy of the integration for each of the systems studied. The accuracy with which the equations of motion are integrated using the RATTLE algorithm for pure water and for the solvated protein are found to be comparable when the nonbonded interactions are tapered with a smoothing function at the cutoff.