ACCURATE CRYSTAL MOLECULAR-DYNAMICS SIMULATIONS USING PARTICLE-MESH-EWALD - RNA DINUCLEOTIDES - APU AND GPC

Long molecular dynamics (MD) simulations for two crystal RNA dinucleotides ApU (2.0 ns) and GpC (1.5 ns) were performed, starting from the crystallographic positions of all heavy atoms in the crystals. By employing the particle-mesh-Ewald algorithm [Darden et al., J. Chem. Phys. 98 (1993) 10089] to accommodate the long-range Coulomb interactions, highly accurate MD structures were obtained for both crystals. The instantaneous root-mean-square positional deviations of the heavy atoms equilibrate at approximately 0.4 Angstrom for both systems, while the experimental and calculated temperature factors are comparable in size. These results describe the first successful crystal MD simulation of RNA molecules.