Pulling two CG lipid vesicles toward each other

GROMACS version:2023.3
GROMACS modification: Yes/No
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Hello All

I am trying to pull two large CG vesicles that are aligned along the X axis from 51 nm distance to 1 nm. Below is the MDP options I used, which worked for another system.


; COM PULLING
pull = yes
; Cylinder radius for dynamic reaction force groups (nm)
pull-cylinder-r = 1.5
pull-constr-tol = 1e-06
pull-print-com = yes
pull-print-ref-value = no
pull-print-components = no
pull-nstxout = 50
pull-nstfout = 50
pull-pbc-ref-prev-step-com = yes
pull-xout-average = no
pull-fout-average = no
; Number of pull groups
pull-ngroups = 2
; Number of pull coordinates
pull-ncoords = 1
; Group and coordinate parameters
pull-group1-name = ves1 ;lipids and water and ions inside of the left vesicle
pull-group2-name = ves2 ; lipids and water and ions inside of the right vesicle
pull-group1-weights =
pull-group1-pbcatom = 542874
pull-group2-pbcatom = 1920406
pull-coord1-type = constant-force
pull-coord1-potential-provider =
pull-coord1-expression =
pull-coord1-dx = 1e-09
pull-coord1-geometry = distance
pull-coord1-groups = 1 2
pull-coord1-dim = Y N N
pull-coord1-start = yes
pull-coord1-init =
pull-coord1-rate = 0.001 ; 0.001nm per ps = 1 nm per 1 ns
pull-coord1-k = 1000 ; KJ mol-1 nm -1
pull-coord1-kB = 0


This set up worked for a similar system but it fails for the current one with this following error message.


Note that mdrun will redetermine rlist based on the actual pair-list setup
Pull group natoms pbc atom distance at start reference at t=0
1 340857 542874
2 343395 1920406

Program: gmx grompp, version 2023.3
Source file: src/gromacs/pulling/pull.cpp (line 525)

Fatal error:
Distance between pull groups 1 and 2 (51.721501 nm) is larger than 0.49 times
the box size (50.828498).


The box sizes are 103.73163 51.86582 51.86582, and hence the X axis is clearly longer than the starting COM distance.

Could you tell me how to change the parameters to resolve the error?

Thanks in advance

Sunjoo

You have to use geometry=direction for this.

Thanks!
I will try

Sunjoo