Molecular dynamics simulations of N-methylacetamide (NMA) in water by the ABEEM/MM model

Abstract

The N-methylacetamide (NMA) is a very interesting kind of compound and often serves as a model of the peptide bond. The interaction between NMA and water provides a convenient prototype for the solvation of peptides in aqueous solutions. We have carried out molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of a NMA molecule in water under 1 atm and 298 K. The simulations make use of the newly developed NMA–water fluctuating charge ABEEM/MM potential model ( Yang, Z. Z.; Qian, P. J. Chem. Phys. 2006, 125, 064311 ), which is based on the combination of the atom-bond electronegativity equalization method (ABEEM) and molecular mechanics (MM). This model has been successfully applied to NMA–water gas clusters, NMA(H2O)n (n = 1–6), and accurately reproduced many static properties. For the NMA–water ABEEM/MM potential model, two characters must be emphasized in the simulations. Firstly, the model allows the charges in system to fluctuate, responding to the ambient environment. Secondly, for two major types of intermolecular hydrogen bonds, which are the hydrogen bond forming between the lone-pair electron on amide oxygen and the water hydrogen, and the one forming between the lone-pair electron on water oxygen and the amide hydrogen, we take special treatments in describing the electrostatic interaction by the use of the parameters klpO=,H and klpO–,HN–, respectively, which explicitly describe the short-range interaction of hydrogen bonds in the hydrogen bond interaction region. All sorts of properties have been studied in detail, such as, radial distribution function, energy distribution, ABEEM charge distribution and dipole moment, and so on. These simulation results show that the ABEEM/MM-based NMA–water potential model appears to be robust, giving the solution properties in excellent agreement with other dynamics simulations on similar systems.