| 1. |
- Larsson, Per, 1972-, et al.
(författare)
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Algorithm improvements for molecular dynamics simulations
- 2011
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Ingår i: Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews. Computational Molecular Science. - : Wiley. - 1759-0884 .- 1759-0876. ; 1:1, s. 93-108
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- High-performance implementations of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations play an important role in the study of macromolecules. Recent advances in both hardware and simulation software have extended the accessible time scales significantly, but the more complex algorithms used in many codes today occasionally make it difficult to understand the program flow and data structures without at least some knowledge about the underlying ideas used to improve performance. In this review, we discuss some of the currently most important areas of algorithm improvement to accelerate MD, including floating-point maths, techniques to accelerate nonbonded interactions, and methods to allow multiple or extended time steps. There is also a strong trend of increased parallelization on different levels, including both distributed memory domain decomposition, stream processing algorithms running, e. g., on graphics processing units hardware, and last but not least techniques to decouple simulations to enable massive parallelism on next-generation supercomputers or distributed computing. We describe some of the impacts these algorithms are having in current performance, and also how we believe they can be combined in the future.
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| 2. |
- Viveca, Lindahl, 1986-
(författare)
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Optimizing sampling of important events in complex biomolecular systems
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Proteins and DNA are large, complex molecules that carry out biological functions essential to all life. Their successful operation relies on adopting specific structures, stabilized by intra-molecular interactions between atoms. The spatial and temporal resolution required to study the mechanics of these molecules in full detail can only be obtained using computer simulations of molecular models. In a molecular dynamics simulation, a trajectory of the system is generated, which allows mapping out the states and dynamics of the molecule. However, the time and length scales characteristic of biological events are many orders of magnitude larger than the resolution needed to accurately describe the microscopic processes of the atoms. To overcome this problem, sampling methods have been developed that enhance the occurrence of rare but important events, which improves the statistics of simulation data.This thesis summarizes my work on developing the AWH method, an algorithm that adaptively optimizes sampling toward a target function and simultaneously finds and assigns probabilities to states of the simulated system. I have adapted AWH for use in molecular dynamics simulations. In doing so, I investigated the convergence of the method as a function of its input parameters and improved the robustness of the method. I have also worked on a generally applicable approach for calculating the target function in an automatic and non-arbitrary way. Traditionally, the target is set in an ad hoc way, while now sampling can be improved by 50% or more without extra effort. I have also used AWH to improve sampling in two biologically relevant applications. In one paper, we study the opening of a DNA base pair, which due to the stability of the DNA double helix only very rarely occurs spontaneously. We show that the probability of opening depends on both nearest-neighbor and longer-range sequence effect and furthermore structurally characterize the open states. In the second application the permeability and ammonia selectivity of the membrane protein aquaporin is investigated and we show that these functions are sensitive to specific mutations.
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| 3. |
- Abraham, Mark James, 1977-, et al.
(författare)
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GROMACS: High performance molecular simulations through multi-level parallelism from laptops to supercomputers
- 2015
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Ingår i: SoftwareX. - : Elsevier. - 2352-7110. ; 1-2, s. 19-25
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- GROMACS is one of the most widely used open-source and free software codes in chemistry, used primarily for dynamical simulations of biomolecules. It provides a rich set of calculation types, preparation and analysis tools. Several advanced techniques for free-energy calculations are supported. In version 5, it reaches new performance heights, through several new and enhanced parallelization algorithms. These work on every level; SIMD registers inside cores, multithreading, heterogeneous CPU–GPU acceleration, state-of-the-art 3D domain decomposition, and ensemble-level parallelization through built-in replica exchange and the separate Copernicus framework. The latest best-in-class compressed trajectory storage format is supported.
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| 4. |
- Abraham, Mark James, et al.
(författare)
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Sharing Data from Molecular Simulations
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling. - : AMER CHEMICAL SOC. - 1549-9596 .- 1549-960X. ; 59:10, s. 4093-4099
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Given the need for modern researchers to produce open, reproducible scientific output, the lack of standards and best practices for sharing data and workflows used to produce and analyze molecular dynamics (MD) simulations has become an important issue in the field. There are now multiple well-established packages to perform molecular dynamics simulations, often highly tuned for exploiting specific classes of hardware, each with strong communities surrounding them, but with very limited interoperability/transferability options. Thus, the choice of the software package often dictates the workflow for both simulation production and analysis. The level of detail in documenting the workflows and analysis code varies greatly in published work, hindering reproducibility of the reported results and the ability for other researchers to build on these studies. An increasing number of researchers are motivated to make their data available, but many challenges remain in order to effectively share and reuse simulation data. To discuss these and other issues related to best practices in the field in general, we organized a workshop in November 2018 (https://bioexcel.eu/events/workshop-on-sharing-data-from-molecular-simulations/). Here, we present a brief overview of this workshop and topics discussed. We hope this effort will spark further conversation in the MD community to pave the way toward more open, interoperable, and reproducible outputs coming from research studies using MD simulations.
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| 5. |
- Alekseenko, Andrej, et al.
(författare)
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Experiences with Adding SYCL Support to GROMACS
- 2021
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Ingår i: IWOCL'21. - New York, NY, USA : Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- GROMACS is an open-source, high-performance molecular dynamics (MD) package primarily used for biomolecular simulations, accounting for 5% of HPC utilization worldwide. Due to the extreme computing needs of MD, significant efforts are invested in improving the performance and scalability of simulations. Target hardware ranges from supercomputers to laptops of individual researchers and volunteers of distributed computing projects such as Folding@Home. The code has been designed both for portability and performance by explicitly adapting algorithms to SIMD and data-parallel processors. A SIMD intrinsic abstraction layer provides high CPU performance. Explicit GPU acceleration has long used CUDA to target NVIDIA devices and OpenCL for AMD/Intel devices. In this talk, we discuss the experiences and challenges of adding support for the SYCL platform into the established GROMACS codebase and share experiences and considerations in porting and optimization. While OpenCL offers the benefits of using the same code to target different hardware, it suffers from several drawbacks that add significant development friction. Its separate-source model leads to code duplication and makes changes complicated. The need to use C99 for kernels, while the rest of the codebase uses C++17, exacerbates these issues. Another problem is that OpenCL, while supported by most GPU vendors, is never the main framework and thus is not getting the primary support or tuning efforts. SYCL alleviates many of these issues, employing a single-source model based on the modern C++ standard. In addition to being the primary platform for Intel GPUs, the possibility to target AMD and NVIDIA GPUs through other implementations (e.g., hipSYCL) might make it possible to reduce the number of separate GPU ports that have to be maintained. Some design differences from OpenCL, such as flow directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) instead of in-order queues, made it necessary to reconsider the GROMACS's task scheduling approach and architectural choices in the GPU backend. Additionally, supporting multiple GPU platforms presents a challenge of balancing performance (low-level and hardware-specific code) and maintainability (more generalization and code-reuse). We will discuss the limitations of the existing codebase and interoperability layers with regards to adding the new platform; the compute performance and latency comparisons; code quality considerations; and the issues we encountered with SYCL implementations tested. Finally, we will discuss our goals for the next release cycle for the SYCL backend and the overall architecture of GPU acceleration code in GROMACS.
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| 8. |
- Benrick, Anna, 1979, et al.
(författare)
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Interleukin-6 gene knockout influences energy balance regulating peptides in the hypothalamic paraventricular and supraoptic nuclei.
- 2009
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Ingår i: Journal of neuroendocrinology. - : Wiley. - 1365-2826 .- 0953-8194. ; 21:7, s. 620-8
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Interleukin (IL)-6 is a pro-inflammatory cytokine that also affects metabolic function because IL-6 depleted (IL-6(-/-)) mice develop late-onset obesity. IL-6 appears to act in the central nervous system, presumably in the hypothalamus, to increase energy expenditure that appears to involve stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system. In the present study, we explored possible central mechanisms for the effects exerted by IL-6 on body fat. Therefore, we measured the effects of IL-6 depletion in IL-6(-/-) mice on expression of key hypothalamic peptide genes involved in energy balance by the real time polymerase chain reaction. Additionally, co-localisation between such peptides and IL-6 receptor alpha was investigated by immunohistochemistry. IL-6 deficiency decreased the expression of several peptides found in the paraventricular nucleus (PVN), which is a nucleus that has been attributed an adipostatic function. For example, corticotrophin-releasing hormone (CRH), which is reported to stimulate the sympathetic nervous system, was decreased by 40% in older IL-6(-/-) mice. Oxytocin, which is reported to prevent obesity, was also decreased in older IL-6(-/-) animals, as was arginine vasopressin (AVP). The IL-6 receptor alpha was abundantly expressed in the PVN, but also in the supraoptic nucleus, and was shown to be co-expressed to a high extent with CRH, AVP, oxytocin and thyrotrophin-releasing hormone. These data indicate that depletion of endogenous IL-6, a body fat suppressing cytokine, is associated with the decreased expression of CRH and oxytocin (i.e. energy balance regulating peptides) as well as AVP in the PVN. Because IL-6 receptor alpha is co-expressed with CRH, oxytocin and AVP, IL-6 could stimulate the expression of these peptides directly.
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| 9. |
- Bergh, Cathrine, et al.
(författare)
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Discovery of lipid binding sites in a ligand-gated ion channel by integrating simulations and cryo-EM
- 2024
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Ingår i: eLife. - : eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd. - 2050-084X. ; 12, s. 2023-01
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Ligand-gated ion channels transduce electrochemical signals in neurons and other excitable cells. Aside fromcanonical ligands, phospholipids are thought to bind specifically to the transmembrane domain of several ionchannels. However, structural details of such lipid contacts remain elusive, partly due to limited resolution ofthese regions in experimental structures. Here, we discovered multiple lipid interactions in the channel GLICby integrating cryo-electron microscopy and large-scale molecular simulations. We identified 25 bound lipidsin the GLIC closed state, a conformation where none, to our knowledge, were previously known. Three lipidswere associated with each subunit in the inner leaflet, including a buried interaction disrupted in mutantsimulations. In the outer leaflet, two intrasubunit sites were evident in both closed and open states, whilea putative intersubunit site was preferred in open-state simulations. This work offers molecular details ofGLIC-lipid contacts particularly in the ill-characterized closed state, testable hypotheses for state-dependentbinding, and a multidisciplinary strategy for modeling protein-lipid interactions.
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| 10. |
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