| 1. |
- Blau, Christian, et al.
(författare)
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Gromaps: A Gromacs-Based Toolset to Analyse Density Maps Derived from Molecular Dynamics Simulations
- 2019
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Ingår i: Biophysical Journal. - : Elsevier BV. - 0006-3495 .- 1542-0086. ; 116:1, s. 4-11
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We introduce a computational toolset, named GROmaρs, to obtain and compare time-averaged density maps from molecular dynamics simulations. GROmaρs efficiently computes density maps by fast multi-Gaussian spreading of atomic densities onto a three-dimensional grid. It complements existing map-based tools by enabling spatial inspection of atomic average localization during the simulations. Most importantly, it allows the comparison between computed and reference maps (e.g., experimental) through calculation of difference maps and local and time-resolved global correlation. These comparison operations proved useful to quantitatively contrast perturbed and control simulation data sets and to examine how much biomolecular systems resemble both synthetic and experimental density maps. This was especially advantageous for multimolecule systems in which standard comparisons like RMSDs are difficult to compute. In addition, GROmaρs incorporates absolute and relative spatial free-energy estimates to provide an energetic picture of atomistic localization. This is an open-source GROMACS-based toolset, thus allowing for static or dynamic selection of atoms or even coarse-grained beads for the density calculation. Furthermore, masking of regions was implemented to speed up calculations and to facilitate the comparison with experimental maps. Beyond map comparison, GROmaρs provides a straightforward method to detect solvent cavities and average charge distribution in biomolecular systems. We employed all these functionalities to inspect the localization of lipid and water molecules in aquaporin systems, the binding of cholesterol to the G protein coupled chemokine receptor type 4, and the identification of permeation pathways through the dermicidin antimicrobial channel. Based on these examples, we anticipate a high applicability of GROmaρs for the analysis of molecular dynamics simulations and their comparison with experimentally determined densities.
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| 2. |
- Kirscht, Andreas, et al.
(författare)
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Crystal Structure of an Ammonia-Permeable Aquaporin
- 2016
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Ingår i: PLoS Biology. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1545-7885. ; 14:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Aquaporins of the TIP subfamily (Tonoplast Intrinsic Proteins) have been suggested to facilitate permeation of water and ammonia across the vacuolar membrane of plants, allowing the vacuole to efficiently sequester ammonium ions and counteract cytosolic fluctuations of ammonia. Here, we report the structure determined at 1.18 Å resolution from twinned crystals of Arabidopsis thaliana aquaporin AtTIP2;1 and confirm water and ammonia permeability of the purified protein reconstituted in proteoliposomes as further substantiated by molecular dynamics simulations. The structure of AtTIP2;1 reveals an extended selectivity filter with the conserved arginine of the filter adopting a unique unpredicted position. The relatively wide pore and the polar nature of the selectivity filter clarify the ammonia permeability. By mutational studies, we show that the identified determinants in the extended selectivity filter region are sufficient to convert a strictly water-specific human aquaporin into an AtTIP2;1-like ammonia channel. A flexible histidine and a novel water-filled side pore are speculated to deprotonate ammonium ions, thereby possibly increasing permeation of ammonia. The molecular understanding of how aquaporins facilitate ammonia flux across membranes could potentially be used to modulate ammonia losses over the plasma membrane to the atmosphere, e.g., during photorespiration, and thereby to modify the nitrogen use efficiency of plants.
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| 3. |
- Kutzner, Carsten, et al.
(författare)
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Best bang for your buck : GPU nodes for GROMACS biomolecular simulations
- 2015
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Ingår i: Journal of Computational Chemistry. - : Wiley. - 0192-8651 .- 1096-987X. ; 36:26, s. 1990-2008
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The molecular dynamics simulation package GROMACS runs efficiently on a wide variety of hardware from commodity workstations to high performance computing clusters. Hardware features are well-exploited with a combination of single instruction multiple data, multithreading, and message passing interface (MPI)-based single program multiple data/multiple program multiple data parallelism while graphics processing units (GPUs) can be used as accelerators to compute interactions off-loaded from the CPU. Here, we evaluate which hardware produces trajectories with GROMACS 4.6 or 5.0 in the most economical way. We have assembled and benchmarked compute nodes with various CPU/GPU combinations to identify optimal compositions in terms of raw trajectory production rate, performance-to-price ratio, energy efficiency, and several other criteria. Although hardware prices are naturally subject to trends and fluctuations, general tendencies are clearly visible. Adding any type of GPU significantly boosts a node's simulation performance. For inexpensive consumer-class GPUs this improvement equally reflects in the performance-to-price ratio. Although memory issues in consumer-class GPUs could pass unnoticed as these cards do not support error checking and correction memory, unreliable GPUs can be sorted out with memory checking tools. Apart from the obvious determinants for cost-efficiency like hardware expenses and raw performance, the energy consumption of a node is a major cost factor. Over the typical hardware lifetime until replacement of a few years, the costs for electrical power and cooling can become larger than the costs of the hardware itself. Taking that into account, nodes with a well-balanced ratio of CPU and consumer-class GPU resources produce the maximum amount of GROMACS trajectory over their lifetime.
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| 4. |
- Kutzner, Carsten, et al.
(författare)
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More bang for your buck : Improved use of GPU nodes for GROMACS 2018
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of Computational Chemistry. - : Wiley. - 0192-8651 .- 1096-987X. ; 40:27, s. 2418-2431
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We identify hardware that is optimal to produce molecular dynamics (MD) trajectories on Linux compute clusters with the GROMACS 2018 simulation package. Therefore, we benchmark the GROMACS performance on a diverse set of compute nodes and relate it to the costs of the nodes, which may include their lifetime costs for energy and cooling. In agreement with our earlier investigation using GROMACS 4.6 on hardware of 2014, the performance to price ratio of consumer GPU nodes is considerably higher than that of CPU nodes. However, with GROMACS 2018, the optimal CPU to GPU processing power balance has shifted even more toward the GPU. Hence, nodes optimized for GROMACS 2018 and later versions enable a significantly higher performance to price ratio than nodes optimized for older GROMACS versions. Moreover, the shift toward GPU processing allows to cheaply upgrade old nodes with recent GPUs, yielding essentially the same performance as comparable brand-new hardware.
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