Charge group partitioning in biomolecular simulation

  • Authors:
  • Stefan Canzar;Mohammed El-Kebir;René Pool;Khaled Elbassioni;Alpesh K. Malde;Alan E. Mark;Daan P. Geerke;Leen Stougie;Gunnar W. Klau

  • Affiliations:
  • Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, Life Sciences Group, Amsterdam, Netherlands;Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, Life Sciences Group, Amsterdam, Netherlands and Centre for Integrative Bioinformatics VU, VU University, Amsterdam, Netherlands;Centre for Integrative Bioinformatics VU, VU University, Amsterdam, Netherlands and Division of Molecular Toxicology, VU University, Amsterdam, Netherlands;Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik, Saarbrücken, Germany;School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia;School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia and Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia;Division of Molecular Toxicology, VU University, Amsterdam, Netherlands;Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, Life Sciences Group, Amsterdam, Netherlands and Department of Operations Research, VU University, Amsterdam, Netherlands;Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, Life Sciences Group, Amsterdam, Netherlands

  • Venue:
  • RECOMB'12 Proceedings of the 16th Annual international conference on Research in Computational Molecular Biology
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

Molecular simulation techniques are increasingly being used to study biomolecular systems at an atomic level. Such simulations rely on empirical force fields to represent the intermolecular interactions. There are many different force fields available|each based on a different set of assumptions and thus requiring different parametrization procedures. Recently, efforts have been made to fully automate the assignment of force-field parameters, including atomic partial charges, for novel molecules. In this work, we focus on a problem arising in the automated parametrization of molecules for use in combination with the gromos family of force fields: namely, the assignment of atoms to charge groups such that for every charge group the sum of the partial charges is ideally equal to its formal charge. In addition, charge groups are required to have size at most k. We show NƤ-hardness and give an exact algorithm capable of solving practical problem instances to provable optimality in a fraction of a second.