A light-switchable peptide is transformed with ultrashort pulses from a ␤-hairpin to an unfolded hydrophobic cluster and vice versa. The structural changes are monitored by mid-IR probing. Instantaneous normal mode analysis with a Hamiltonian combining density functional theory with molecular mechanics is used to interpret the absorption transients. Illumination of the ␤-hairpin state triggers an unfolding reaction that visits several intermediates and reaches the unfolded state within a few nanoseconds. In this unfolding reaction to the equilibrium hydrophobic cluster conformation, the system does not meet significant barriers on the free-energy surface. The reverse folding process takes much longer because it occurs on the time scale of 30 s. The folded state has a defined structure, and its formation requires an extended search for the correct hydrogen-bond pattern of the ␤-strand.density functional theory calculation ͉ peptide folding ͉ TrpZip2 ͉ ultrafast infrared spectroscopy F olding is a key process during the formation of a functional protein after the synthesis of its amino acid chain (1). During folding, the amino acid chains are rearranged in highly complex processes, for which a detailed understanding is still missing. Straightforward solutions of the folding problem are prevented by the high dimensionality of the protein conformational spaces and by the wide range of relevant time scales. Thus, for complexity reduction, one has to focus on typical protein substructures, which are small enough to be analyzed by present-day technology. With corresponding peptide model systems there is a chance to monitor the formation of secondary structures, to identify characteristic intermediate states of these folding dynamics, and to carry out realistic simulations on a molecular level. An interesting class of model systems are light-triggered peptides, within which the incorporation of a photoresponsive element can initiate structural changes.Among corresponding photoresponsive chromophores, azobenzene derivatives have become a popular choice when it comes to selecting a fast conformational trigger for peptide refolding, because their structure significantly changes on time scales of a few hundred femtoseconds after photoexcitation. Indeed, an azobenzene chromophore, used as a backbone element within cyclic peptides, was shown to induce large-scale conformational changes, whose dynamics could be monitored by visible (2) and IR (3) spectroscopy. Moreover, the experimental results clearly showed that the initial, strongly driven conformational changes of the peptide proceeded within a few picoseconds after the trigger event. Externally linked to an ␣-helix, azobenzene also was used for unfolding (4) and refolding (5) of an ␣-helical model peptide in the nanosecond to microsecond time range.A prominent secondary structure motif is the ␤-sheet, for which a ␤-hairpin represents a minimal model (6, 7). We and others (8-10) have recently focused on the design of photocontrolled ␤-hairpin peptides. To enable an ultrafa...

The temperature steers the equilibrium and nonequilibrium conformational dynamics of macromolecules in solution. Therefore, corresponding molecular dynamics simulations require a strategy for temperature control which should guarantee that the experimental statistical ensemble is also sampled in silico. Several algorithms for temperature control have been proposed. All these thermostats interfere with the macromolecule's "natural" dynamics as given by the Newtonian mechanics. Furthermore, using a single thermostat for an inhomogeneous solute-solvent system can lead to stationary temperature gradients. To avoid this "hot solvent/cold solute" problem, two separate thermostats are frequently applied, one to the solute and one to the solvent. However, such a separate temperature control will perturb the dynamics of the macromolecule much more strongly than a global one and, therefore, can introduce large artifacts into its conformational dynamics. Based on the concept that an explicit solvent environment represents an ideal thermostat concerning the magnitude and time correlation of temperature fluctuations of the solute, we propose a temperature control strategy that, on the one hand, provides a homogeneous temperature distribution throughout the system together with the correct statistical ensemble for the solute molecule while, on the other hand, minimally perturbing its dynamics.

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Hybrid methods, which combine a quantum mechanical description of a chromophore by density functional theory (DFT) with a molecular mechanics (MM) model of the surrounding protein binding pocket, can enable highly accurate computations of the chromophore's in situ vibrational spectra. As a prerequisite, one needs a MM model of the chromophore-protein complex, which allows a correct sampling of its room-temperature equilibrium fluctuations by molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. Here, we show for the case of bacteriorhodopsin (BR) that MM-MD descriptions with standard nonpolarizable force fields entail a collapse of the chromophore binding pocket. As demonstrated by us, this collapse can be avoided by employing a polarized MM force field derived by DFT/MM hybrid computations. The corresponding MD simulations, which are complemented by a novel Hamiltonian replica exchange approach, then reveal a structural heterogeneity within the binding pocket of the retinal chromophore, which mainly pertains to the structure of the lysine chain covalently connecting the retinal chromophore with the protein backbone.