No Arabic abstract
Inspired by the recent development on calculating the free energy change via a relaxation process [Nat. Phys. 14, 842 (2018)], we investigate the role of heat released in an irreversible relaxation following a large perturbation. Utilizing a derivation without microscopic reversibility, we arrive at a new free energy estimator that employs a volume term to account for missing important rare events. Applications to harmonic oscillators and particle insertion in Lennard-Jones fluid agree well with the (numerical) exact solutions. Our study hence suggests an alternative interpretation to the insufficient sampling problem in free energy calculations.
We present an approach that extends the theory of targeted free energy perturbation (TFEP) to calculate free energy differences and free energy surfaces at an accurate quantum mechanical level of theory from a cheaper reference potential. The convergence is accelerated by a mapping function that increases the overlap between the target and the reference distributions. Building on recent work, we show that this map can be learned with a normalizing flow neural network, without requiring simulations with the expensive target potential but only a small number of single-point calculations, and, crucially, avoiding the systematic error that was found previously. We validate the method by numerically evaluating the free energy difference in a system with a double-well potential and by describing the free energy landscape of a simple chemical reaction in the gas phase.
The free energy profile of a reaction can be estimated in a molecular-dynamics approach by imposing a mechanical constraint along a reaction coordinate (RC). Many recent studies have shown that the temperature can greatly influence the path followed by the reactants. Here, we propose a practical way to construct the minimum energy path directly on the free energy surface (FES) at a given temperature. First, we follow the blue-moon ensemble method to derive the expression of the free energy gradient for a given RC. These derivatives are then used to find the actual minimum energy reaction path at finite temperature, in a way similar to the Intrinsic Reaction Path of Fukui on the potential energy surface [K Fukui J. Phys. Chem. 74, 4161 (1970)]. Once the path is know, one can calculate the free energy profile using thermodynamic integration. We also show that the mass-metric correction cancels for many types of constraints, making the procedure easy to use. Finally, the minimum free energy path at 300 K for the addition of the 1,1-dichlorocarbene to ethylene is compared with a path based on a simple one-dimensional reaction coordinate. A comparison is also given with the reaction path at 0 K.
The principles behind the computation of protein-ligand binding free energies by Monte Carlo integration are described in detail. The simulation provides gas-phase binding free energies that can be converted to aqueous energies by solvation corrections. The direct integration simulation has several characteristics beneficial to free-energy calculations. One is that the number of parameters that must be set for the simulation is small and can be determined objectively, making the outcome more deterministic, with respect to choice of input conditions, as compared to perturbation methods. Second, the simulation is free from assumptions about the starting pose or nature of the binding site. A final benefit is that binding free energies are a direct outcome of the simulation, and little processing is required to determine them. The well-studied T4 lysozyme experimental free energy data and crystal structures were used to evaluate the method.
It has recently been observed [Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 113002 (2014)] that the ground-state energy may be obtained directly as a simple sum of augmented Kohn-Sham orbital energies, where it was ascertained that the corresponding one-body shifted Kohn-Sham effective potential has appealing features. With this in mind, eigenvalue and virial constraints are deduced for approximating this potential.
The Alchemical Transfer Method (ATM) for the calculation of standard binding free energies of non-covalent molecular complexes is presented. The method is based on a coordinate displacement perturbation of the ligand between the receptor binding site and the explicit solvent bulk, and a thermodynamic cycle connected by a symmetric intermediate in which the ligand interacts with the receptor and solvent environments with equal strength. While the approach is alchemical, the implementation of ATM is as straightforward as for physical pathway methods of binding. The method is applicable in principle with any force field, it does not require splitting the alchemical transformations into electrostatic and non-electrostatic steps, and it does not require soft-core pair potentials. We have implemented ATM as a freely available and open-source plugin of the OpenMM molecular dynamics library. The method and its implementation are validated on the SAMPL6 SAMPLing host-guest benchmark set. The work paves the way to streamlined alchemical relative and absolute binding free energy implementations on many molecular simulation packages and with arbitrary energy functions including polarizable, quantum-mechanical, and artificial neural network potentials.