I am interested in studying interactions between a model lipid bilayer and a compound. In order to speed up the simulation I am planning to use Hydrogen Mass Repartitioning for the lipids. Should I also perform HMR for the interacting compound? Can a mixed simulation with HMR for lipids and no HMR for the compound be performed?
This mass redistribution is performed to decrease the frequency / speed of movement of the fastest moving atoms/bonds in the system, which is the lightest atoms (hydrogen). So if you only redistribute the mass of one set of molecules and leave another set, then the latter will still have the same set of fast/high frequency movement and you will not be able to use a longer time step i.e. you will achieve nothing.
I tried building the HMR membrane using CHARMM-GUI with CHARMM36 FF. The hydrogen and carbon masses of the lipid and protein were increased/decreased as expected (hydrogen mass increased to 3.024 and carbon mass decreased depending on nummber of hydrogen attached to it) but the hydrogen mass remained at 1.008 for the TIP3P water. As pointed above, shouldn’t the mass of hydrogen and oxygen be also changed in water?
If CHARMM-GUI does not produce the expected output, I suggest you contact their developers directly. But the mass of H and O in water is controlled via the use of define = -DHEAVY_H in the .mdp file in the CHARMM36 port. I do not know if the CHARMM-GUI files provide this option, but this is the way it’s normally handled in the CHARMM force field for GROMACS. Other species have to have their masses explicitly reset; water is controlled at the input file level rather than modifying the topology.
So, to run HMR in GROMACS there are two things we need to change i.e. define = -DHEAVY_H and dt = 0.004? Because this is giving me error in the production run. Is there any tutorial or manual for HMR?
Can you provide more detail? Which force field are you using? Some only require HEAVY_H when using constraints, others need it for the water topology to function properly. Help us to help you.
So, I am performing protein-DNA MD simulation.
Force field: DNA_AAMBER99SB_ILDN_STAR_AA_MUTATION_FORCEFIELD for both protein and DNA and TIP3P for water
Then I have included define = -DHEAVY_H and dt = 0.004 in the mdp file.
After 1ns of production run I am getting the following error. Fatal error: Step 10100: The total potential energy is nan, which is not finite. The LJ and electrostatic contributions to the energy are 0 and 0, respectively. A non-finite potential energy can be caused by overlapping interactions in bonded interactions or very large or Nan coordinate values. Usually this is caused by a badly- or non-equilibrated initial configuration, incorrect interactions or parameters in the topology.
I have also energy minimized and equilibrated the system again but getting the same error.
All CHARMM-GUI is doing is allowing one to set a variable for the value of the restraint constant; they modify this in different stages of equilibration.
Please provide the .mdp file(s) for successful and crashing simulations.
It is not appropriate to couple groups separately for COM motion removal for a system like this. You may also have to look at coupling constants for e.g. the barostat, because you have tau_p = 5.0 in the failing run but 2.0 in the successful run. You should really try using the exact same .mdp file from the successful run in the HMR system (obviously with altered dt) to see if it runs, and if it doesn’t it is easier to determine what changes might be needed. In principle, there really shouldn’t be anything special about these settings for a reasonably well-equilibrated system.
It appears all your settings are for the CHARMM force field, but earlier you said you were using AMBER. If you are actually using AMBER, then the nonbonded settings are all incorrect, but that’s a fundamental problem in the inputs, not related to HMR at all.
In 2022.6 this feature seems to be buggy too.
pdb2gmx does create modified topology
grommp shows warning about oscillational period for leucine
mdrun fails with segfault with dt = 0.004 at first unrestrained simulation steps, does not produce errors with dt = 0.003
In the current main branch and the upcoming 2024 release, hydrogen mass repartitioning can now be done by grompp using a single mdp option using a standard topology.
I know I might be a bit late to the conversation, but AFAIK:
multiple forcefields converted to be used to GROMACS, such as Amber14SB do not accept the DHEAVY_H directive flag. Thus, HMR on water molecules is not being made.
On the other side, I think the SETTLE algorithm would still stabliize the water, so this cancel the previous problem.
As I noted before, from GROMACS version 2024 no modifications of the force field are needed. You can use a single mdp option to control hydrogen mass repartitioning.