In molecular dynamics (MD) simulations the need often arises to maintain such parameters as temperature or pressure rather than energy and volume, or to impose gradients for studying transport properties in nonequilibrium MD. A method is described to realize coupling to an external bath with constant temperature or pressure with adjustable time constants for the coupling. The method is easily extendable to other variables and to gradients, and can be applied also to polyatomic molecules involving internal constraints. The influence of coupling time constants on dynamical variables is evaluated. A leap-frog algorithm is presented for the general case involving constraints with coupling to both a constant temperature and a constant pressure bath.

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This article describes the software suite GROMACS (Groningen MAchine for Chemical Simulation) that was developed at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, in the early 1990s. The software, written in ANSI C, originates from a parallel hardware project, and is well suited for parallelization on processor clusters. By careful optimization of neighbor searching and of inner loop performance, GROMACS is a very fast program for molecular dynamics simulation. It does not have a force field of its own, but is compatible with GROMOS, OPLS, AMBER, and ENCAD force fields. In addition, it can handle polarizable shell models and flexible constraints. The program is versatile, as force routines can be added by the user, tabulated functions can be specified, and analyses can be easily customized. Nonequilibrium dynamics and free energy determinations are incorporated. Interfaces with popular quantum-chemical packages (MOPAC, GAMES-UK, GAUSSIAN) are provided to perform mixed MM/QM simulations. The package includes about 100 utility and analysis programs. GROMACS is in the public domain and distributed (with source code and documentation) under the GNU General Public License. It is maintained by a group of developers from the Universities of Groningen, Uppsala, and Stockholm, and the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz. Its Web site is http://www.gromacs.org.

In most of the pathogenic organisms including Plasmodium falciparum, isoprenoids are synthesized via MEP (MethylErythritol 4-Phosphate) pathway. LytB is the last enzyme of this pathway which catalyzes the conversion of (E)-4-hydroxy-3-methylbut-2-en-1-yl diphosphate (HMBPP) into the two isoprenoid precursors: isopentenyl diphosphate (IPP) and dimethylallyl diphosphate (DMAPP). Since the MEP pathway is not used by humans, it represents an attractive target for the development of new antimalarial compounds or inhibitors. Here a systematic in-silico study has been conducted to get an insight into the structure of Plasmodium lytB as well as its affinities towards different inhibitors. We used comparative modeling technique to predict the three dimensional (3D) structure of Plasmodium LytB taking E. Coli LytB protein (PDB ID: 3KE8) as template and the model was subsequently refined through molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. A large ligand dataset containing diphospate group was subjected for virtual screening against the target using GOLD 5.2 program. Considering the mode of binding and affinities, 17 leads were selected on basis of binding energies in comparison to its substrate HMBPP (Gold.Chemscore.DG:-20.9734 kcal/mol). Among them, 5 were discarded because of their inhibitory activity towards other human enzymes. The rest 12 potential leads carry all the properties of any "drug like" molecule and the knowledge of Plasmodium LytB inhibitory mechanism which can provide valuable support for the antimalarial inhibitor design in future.. Structural model of the Plasmodium falciparum Thioredoxin reductase: a novel target for antimalarial drugs. Journal of vector borne diseases, 46: 171-83. Retrieved from http://www.mrcindia.org/, [3] Berendsen, H.

ABSTRACT:In this article, we present a new LINear Constraint Solver Ž . LINCS for molecular simulations with bond constraints. The algorithm is inherently stable, as the constraints themselves are reset instead of derivatives of the constraints, thereby eliminating drift. Although the derivation of the algorithm is presented in terms of matrices, no matrix matrix multiplications are needed and only the nonzero matrix elements have to be stored, making the method useful for very large molecules. At the same accuracy, the LINCS algorithm is three to four times faster than the SHAKE algorithm. Parallelization of the algorithm is straightforward.

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In this article, we present a new LINear Constraint Solver (LINCS) for molecular simulations with bond constraints. The algorithm is inherently stable, as the constraints themselves are reset instead of derivatives of the constraints, thereby eliminating drift. Although the derivation of the algorithm is presented in terms of matrices, no matrix matrix multiplications are needed and only the nonzero matrix elements have to be stored, making the method useful for very large molecules. At the same accuracy, the LINCS algorithm is three to four times faster than the SHAKE algorithm. Parallelization of the algorithm is straightforward. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Comput Chem 18: 1463–1472, 1997

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