We describe the development, current features, and some directions for future development of the Amber package of computer programs. This package evolved from a program that was constructed in the late 1970s to do Assisted Model Building with Energy Refinement, and now contains a group of programs embodying a number of powerful tools of modern computational chemistry, focused on molecular dynamics and free energy calculations of proteins, nucleic acids, and carbohydrates.

We describe PTRAJ and its successor CPPTRAJ, two complementary, portable, and freely available computer programs for the analysis and processing of time series of three-dimensional atomic positions (i.e., coordinate trajectories) and the data therein derived. Common tools include the ability to manipulate the data to convert among trajectory formats, process groups of trajectories generated with ensemble methods (e.g., replica exchange molecular dynamics), image with periodic boundary conditions, create average structures, strip subsets of the system, and perform calculations such as RMS fitting, measuring distances, B-factors, radii of gyration, radial distribution functions, and time correlations, among other actions and analyses. Both the PTRAJ and CPPTRAJ programs and source code are freely available under the GNU General Public License version 3 and are currently distributed within the AmberTools 12 suite of support programs that make up part of the Amber package of computer programs (see http://ambermd.org ). This overview describes the general design, features, and history of these two programs, as well as algorithmic improvements and new features available in CPPTRAJ.

A historical perspective on the application of molecular dynamics (MD) to biological macromolecules is presented. Recent developments combining state-of-the-art force fields with continuum solvation calculations have allowed us to reach the fourth era of MD applications in which one can often derive both accurate structure and accurate relative free energies from molecular dynamics trajectories. We illustrate such applications on nucleic acid duplexes, RNA hairpins, protein folding trajectories, and proteinligand, protein-protein, and protein-nucleic acid interactions.