The rapid spreading of antimicrobial resistance in Gram-negative bacteria has become a major threat for humans as well as animals. As one of the main factors involved, the permeability of the outer membrane has attracted a great deal of attention recently. However, the knowledge regarding the translocation mechanisms for most available antibiotics is so far rather limited. Here, a theoretical study concerning the diffusion route of ciprofloxacin across the outer membrane porin OmpC from E. coli is presented. To this end, we establish a protocol to characterize meaningful permeation pathways by combining metadynamics with the zero-temperature string method. It was found that the lowest-energy pathway requires a reorientation of ciprofloxacin in the extracellular side of the porin before reaching the constriction region with its carboxyl group ahead. Several affinity sites have been identified, and their metastability has been evaluated using unbiased simulations. Such a detailed understanding is potentially very helpful in guiding the development of next generation antibiotics.

The structure and dynamics of N-butyl-N-methyl pyrrolidinium(+) bis([tri]fluoro[methane]sulfonyl)imide(-) (PYR14(+)-[T]FSI(-)) ionic liquids doped with Li(T)FSI are investigated by combining experimental measurements to molecular dynamics simulations. The polarizable force field calculations indicate that the lithium cations are coordinated by (T)FSI anion oxygens forming lithium adducts stabilized over a large temperature range by strong Li-O bonds. Lithium aggregation is found to be negligible at the doping level considered here (10% mole fraction), and Li(+) diffusion occurs primarily by exchanging the (T)FSI anions in their first coordination shell. The resulting calculated transport properties are in good agreement with the corresponding nuclear magnetic resonance data.

In Gram-negative bacteria, the lack or quenching of antibiotic translocation across the outer membrane is one of the main factors for acquiring antibiotic resistance. An atomic-level comprehension of the key features governing the transport of drugs by outer-membrane protein channels would be very helpful in developing the next generation of antibiotics. In a previous study [ J. D. Prajapati et al. J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2017 , 13 , 4553 ], we characterized the diffusion pathway of a ciprofloxacin molecule through the outer membrane porin OmpC of Escherichia coli by combining metadynamics and a zero-temperature string method. Here, we evaluate the diffusion route through the OmpC porin for a similar fluoroquinolone, that is, the enrofloxacin molecule, using the previously developed protocol. As a result, it was found that the lowest-energy pathway was similar to that for ciprofloxacin; namely, a reorientation was required on the extracellular side with the carboxyl group ahead before enrofloxacin reached the constriction region. In turn, the free-energy basins for both antibiotics are located at similar positions in the space defined by selected reaction coordinates, and their affinity sites share a wide number of porin residues. However, there are some important deviations due to the chemical differences of these two drugs. On the one hand, a slower diffusion process is expected for enrofloxacin, as the permeation pathway exhibits higher overall energy barriers, mainly in the constriction region. On the other hand, enrofloxacin needs to replace some polar interactions in its affinity sites with nonpolar ones. This study demonstrates how minor chemical modifications can qualitatively affect the translocation mechanism of an antibiotic molecule.

All-atom molecular dynamics simulations have a long history of applications studying ion and substrate permeation across biological and artificial pores. While offering unprecedented insights into the underpinning transport processes, MD simulations are limited in time-scales and ability to simulate physiological membrane potentials or asymmetric salt solutions and require substantial computational power. While several approaches to circumvent all of these limitations were developed, Brownian dynamics simulations remain an attractive option to the field. The main limitation, however, is an apparent lack of protein flexibility important for the accurate description of permeation events. In the present contribution, we report an extension of the Brownian dynamics scheme which includes conformational dynamics. To achieve this goal, the dynamics of amino-acid residues was incorporated into the many-body potential of mean force and into the Langevin equations of motion. The developed software solution, called BROMOCEA, was applied to ion transport through OmpC as a test case. Compared to fully atomistic simulations, the results show a clear improvement in the ratio of permeating anions and cations. The present tests strongly indicate that pore flexibility can enhance permeation properties which will become even more important in future applications to substrate translocation.

A theoretical framework is presented to model ion and DNA translocation across a nanopore confinement under an applied electric field. A combined Grand Canonical Monte Carlo Brownian Dynamics (GCMC/BD) algorithm offers a general approach to study ion permeation through wide molecular pores with a direct account of ion–ion and ion–DNA correlations. This work extends previously developed theory by incorporating the recently developed coarse-grain polymer model of DNA by de Pablo and colleagues [Knotts, T. A.; Rathore, N.; Schwartz, D. C.; de Pablo, J. J. J. Chem. Phys. 2007, 126] with explicit ions for simulations of polymer dynamics. Atomistic MD simulations were used to guide model developments. The power of the developed scheme is illustrated with studies of single-stranded DNA (ss-DNA) oligomer translocation in two model cases: a cylindrical pore with a varying radius and a well-studied experimental system, the staphylococcal α-hemolysin channel. The developed model shows good agreement with experimental data for model studies of two homopolymers: ss-poly(dA)n and ss-poly(dC)n. The developed protocol allows for direct evaluation of different factors (charge distribution and pore shape and size) controlling DNA translocation in a variety of nanopores.