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Converging ligand‐binding free energies obtained with free‐energy perturbations at the quantum mechanical level
Author(s) -
Olsson Martin A.,
Söderhjelm Pär,
Ryde Ulf
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of computational chemistry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.907
H-Index - 188
eISSN - 1096-987X
pISSN - 0192-8651
DOI - 10.1002/jcc.24375
Subject(s) - quantum , molecular dynamics , convergence (economics) , chemistry , hamiltonian (control theory) , ligand (biochemistry) , qm/mm , energy (signal processing) , computational chemistry , physics , statistical physics , thermodynamics , quantum mechanics , mathematics , mathematical optimization , biochemistry , receptor , economics , economic growth
In this article, the convergence of quantum mechanical (QM) free‐energy simulations based on molecular dynamics simulations at the molecular mechanics (MM) level has been investigated. We have estimated relative free energies for the binding of nine cyclic carboxylate ligands to the octa‐acid deep‐cavity host, including the host, the ligand, and all water molecules within 4.5 Å of the ligand in the QM calculations (158–224 atoms). We use single‐step exponential averaging (ssEA) and the non‐Boltzmann Bennett acceptance ratio (NBB) methods to estimate QM/MM free energy with the semi‐empirical PM6‐DH2X method, both based on interaction energies. We show that ssEA with cumulant expansion gives a better convergence and uses half as many QM calculations as NBB, although the two methods give consistent results. With 720,000 QM calculations per transformation, QM/MM free‐energy estimates with a precision of 1 kJ/mol can be obtained for all eight relative energies with ssEA, showing that this approach can be used to calculate converged QM/MM binding free energies for realistic systems and large QM partitions. © 2016 The Authors. Journal of Computational Chemistry Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.