Effects of force fields for refining protein NMR structures with atomistic force fields and generalized-Born implicit solvent model

Atomistic molecular dynamics (MD) simulation has become mature enabling close approximation of the real behaviors of biomolecules. In biomolecular NMR field, atomistic MD simulation coupled with generalized implicit solvent model (GBIS) has contributed to improving the qualities of NMR structures in the refinement stage with experimental restraints. Here all-atom force fields play important roles in defining the optimal positions between atoms and angles, resulting in more precise and accurate structures. Despite successful applications in refining NMR structure, however, the research that has studied the influence of force fields in GBIS is limited. In this study, we compared the qualities of NMR structures of two model proteins, ubiquitin and GB1, under a series of AMBER force fields-ff99SB, ff99SB-ILDN, ff99SB-NMR, ff12SB, and ff13-with experimental restraints. The root mean square deviations of backbone atoms and packing scores that reflect the apparent structural qualities were almost indistinguishable except ff13. Qualitative comparison of parameters, however, indicates that ff99SB-ILDN is more recommendable, at least in the cases of ubiquitin and GB1.