Particle-based implicit solvent model for biosimulations: Application to proteins and nucleic acids hydration

In addition to the simulation of two proteins described previously, we report on the application of our recently developed particle-based implicit solvent model to the simulations of four nucleic acid molecules, the 17 bases anticodon hairpin of the Asp-tRNA, the decamer d(CCGCCGGCGG) in both A and B form, and the containing EcoRI restriction site dodecamer d(CGCGAATTCGCG). The solvent is represented by a fluid of Lennard-Jones polarizable pseudoparticles of molecular size, the induced dipoles of which are sensitive to the solute electric field but not to each other. When implemented in a molecular dynamics algorithm with the Amber94 force field, the model allows to simulate efficiently the conformational evolution of the nucleic acids, yielding stable three-dimensional structures in agreement with experiments and other simulations in explicit solvent. In the same run, it is also able to provide estimations of the electrostatic solvation free energy within short time windows which correlate well with the Poisson-Boltzmann calculations. In addition, the molecular aspect of the solvent model allows for the reproduction of the highly localized water molecules in the major or minor grooves of the nucleic acid double helices, despite the absence of explicit water hydrogen bonds.