{"title":"DC24: A new density coherence functional for multiconfiguration density‐coherence functional theory","authors":"Dayou Zhang, Yinan Shu, Donald G. Truhlar","doi":"10.1002/jcc.27522","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/jcc.27522","url":null,"abstract":"In this study, we explored several alternative functional forms to construct more accurate and more physical density coherence (DC) functionals for multiconfiguration density‐coherence functional theory. Each functional is parameterized against the same database as used in our previous work. The best DC functional, which is called DC24, has a more physical interpretation, and—as a side benefit—it also has a mean unsigned error of 1.73 kcal/mol, which is a 9% improvement as compared to the previous functional. The article also contains a new definition of the unpaired electron density, which may be useful in other contexts as well.","PeriodicalId":188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computational Chemistry","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142597905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Danillo Valverde, Roiney Beal, Paulo Fernando Bruno Gonçalves, Antonio Carlos Borin
{"title":"Excited state relaxation mechanisms of paracetamol and acetanilide.","authors":"Danillo Valverde, Roiney Beal, Paulo Fernando Bruno Gonçalves, Antonio Carlos Borin","doi":"10.1002/jcc.27521","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/jcc.27521","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The photochemical pathways of acetanilide and paracetamol were investigated using the XMS-CASPT2 quantum chemical method and the cc-pVDZ (correlation consistent polarized valence double- <math> <semantics><mrow><mi>ζ</mi></mrow> <annotation>$$ zeta $$</annotation></semantics> </math> ) basis set. In both compounds, the bright state is the second excited state, designated as a <math> <semantics> <mrow><msup><mrow></mrow> <mn>1</mn></msup> <mo>(</mo> <msup><mi>ππ</mi> <mo>*</mo></msup> </mrow> <annotation>$$ {}^1Big({pi pi}^{ast } $$</annotation></semantics> </math> L<sub>a</sub>) state. Through a detailed exploration of the potential energy profile and the conical intersection structure between the <math> <semantics> <mrow><msup><mrow></mrow> <mn>1</mn></msup> <mo>(</mo> <msup><mi>ππ</mi> <mo>*</mo></msup> </mrow> <annotation>$$ {}^1Big({pi pi}^{ast } $$</annotation></semantics> </math> L<sub>a</sub>) and ground states, we gained a better understanding of how cleavage might occur in both molecules upon photoexcitation. Other potential relaxation mechanisms, including crossings with the dark <math> <semantics> <mrow><msup><mrow></mrow> <mn>1</mn></msup> <mfenced><mrow><mi>n</mi> <msup><mi>π</mi> <mo>*</mo></msup> </mrow> </mfenced> </mrow> <annotation>$$ {}^1left(n{pi}^{ast}right) $$</annotation></semantics> </math> and <math> <semantics> <mrow><msup><mrow></mrow> <mn>1</mn></msup> <mo>(</mo> <msup><mi>ππ</mi> <mo>*</mo></msup> </mrow> <annotation>$$ {}^1Big({pi pi}^{ast } $$</annotation></semantics> </math> L<sub>a</sub>) states, are also discussed in detail.</p>","PeriodicalId":188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computational Chemistry","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142575025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Assessing small molecule conformational sampling methods in molecular docking","authors":"Qiancheng Xia, Qiuyu Fu, Cheng Shen, Ruth Brenk, Niu Huang","doi":"10.1002/jcc.27516","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/jcc.27516","url":null,"abstract":"Small molecule conformational sampling plays a pivotal role in molecular docking. Recent advancements have led to the emergence of various conformational sampling methods, each employing distinct algorithms. This study investigates the impact of different small molecule conformational sampling methods in molecular docking using UCSF DOCK 3.7. Specifically, six traditional sampling methods (Omega, BCL::Conf, CCDC Conformer Generator, ConfGenX, Conformator, RDKit ETKDGv3) and a deep learning-based model (Torsional Diffusion) for generating conformational ensembles are evaluated. These ensembles are subsequently docked against the Platinum Diverse Dataset, the PoseBusters dataset and the DUDE-Z dataset to assess binding pose reproducibility and screening power. Notably, different sampling methods exhibit varying performance due to their unique preferences, such as dihedral angle sampling ranges on rotatable bonds. Combining complementary methods may lead to further improvements in docking performance.","PeriodicalId":188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computational Chemistry","volume":"66 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142541464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stable, aromatic, and electrophilic azepinium ions: Design using quantum chemical methods","authors":"Nabajyoti Patra, Astha Gupta, Prasad V. Bharatam","doi":"10.1002/jcc.27520","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/jcc.27520","url":null,"abstract":"Cyclic nitrenium ions containing five-membered and six-membered rings are available, however, the seven-membered cyclic nitrenium ions (azepinium ions) are rare. The chemistry of these species is related to their stability originating from the aromaticity due to 6π electrons. Very few theoretical and experimental studies have been conducted on the azepinium ions. Related clozapine and olanzapine cations (diazepinium ions) were observed during drug metabolism studies. In this work, quantum chemical analysis has been carried out to estimate the stability, aromaticity, and electrophilicity of several derivatives of azepinium ions. A few of the designed azepinium ions carry Δ<i>E</i><sub>S-T</sub> values in the range of 50 kcal/mol favoring singlet state; π donating groups at the 2nd position increase the singlet-triplet energy differences. Most of the substituents reduce the NICS(1) values compared to the parent system. Ring fusion with heterocyclic five-membered rings generally increases the aromaticity and the stability of the azepinium ion ring systems. The electrophilicity parameters estimated in terms of HIA, FIA, and <i>ω</i> values indicate that it is possible to fine-tune the chemical properties of azepinium ions with appropriate modulation.","PeriodicalId":188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computational Chemistry","volume":"111 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142541462","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Shailesh Kumar Panday, Arghya Chakravorty, Shan Zhao, Emil Alexov
{"title":"On delivering polar solvation free energy of proteins from energy minimized structures using a regularized super-Gaussian Poisson-Boltzmann model.","authors":"Shailesh Kumar Panday, Arghya Chakravorty, Shan Zhao, Emil Alexov","doi":"10.1002/jcc.27496","DOIUrl":"10.1002/jcc.27496","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The biomolecules interact with their partners in an aqueous media; thus, their solvation energy is an important thermodynamics quantity. In previous works (J. Chem. Theory Comput. 14(2): 1020-1032), we demonstrated that the Poisson-Boltzmann (PB) approach reproduces solvation energy calculated via thermodynamic integration (TI) protocol if the structures of proteins are kept rigid. However, proteins are not rigid bodies and computing their solvation energy must account for their flexibility. Typically, in the framework of PB calculations, this is done by collecting snapshots from molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, computing their solvation energies, and averaging to obtain the ensemble-averaged solvation energy, which is computationally demanding. To reduce the computational cost, we have proposed Gaussian/super-Gaussian-based methods for the dielectric function that use the atomic packing to deliver smooth dielectric function for the entire computational space, the protein and water phase, which allows the ensemble-averaged solvation energy to be computed from a single structure. One of the technical difficulties associated with the smooth dielectric function presentation with respect to polar solvation energy is the absence of a dielectric border between the protein and water where induced charges should be positioned. This motivated the present work, where we report a super-Gaussian regularized Poisson-Boltzmann method and use it for computing the polar solvation energy from single energy minimized structures and assess its ability to reproduce the ensemble-averaged polar solvation on a dataset of 74 high-resolution monomeric proteins.</p>","PeriodicalId":188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computational Chemistry","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142542366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Dušan Ćoćić, Liu Yang, Ralph Puchta, Tiesheng Shi, Rudi van Eldik
{"title":"Investigation of the complete encapsulation process of the noble gases by cryptophanes","authors":"Dušan Ćoćić, Liu Yang, Ralph Puchta, Tiesheng Shi, Rudi van Eldik","doi":"10.1002/jcc.27519","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/jcc.27519","url":null,"abstract":"Based on DFT calculations (ωB97XD/def2‐SVP/SVPfit), the ability and mechanism of noble gas encapsulation by series of cryptophanes were investigated. The focus was set to study the influence of different functionalization groups placed at the “gates” of cryptophanes cavity entrance by which the energy criteria were chosen as a main indicator for selective encapsulation of noble gases. Chosen functionalization groups were CH<jats:sub>3</jats:sub>, OCH<jats:sub>3</jats:sub>, OH, NH<jats:sub>2</jats:sub>, and Cl, and the encapsulation process of these cryptophanes was compared to a cryptophane without any functionalization group on its outer rim. Those groups were selected based on their different chemical properties and based on their size which will subsequently put additional steric restrictions on the cavity entrance. Chosen functionalization groups, beside their steric influence on the energy barrier magnitude, influence also the gating process through its chemical nature by which they can put an additional stabilization on noble gases encapsulation transition states enhancing the encapsulation process. Objective of this study was clearly to get better insights on the influence of those functional groups on the whole encapsulation process of noble gases. Large‐size noble gases (Xe and Rn) from all noble gases are best accommodated in the cavities of selected cryptophanes, on the other hand these noble gases require to pass the highest energy barrier through the gating process. From the series of investigated cryptophanes, the cryptophane with the OCH<jats:sub>3</jats:sub> functionalization group has been identified as the one with the best capabilities to host investigated noble gases, but on the other side this cryptophane puts the highest energy criteria required for the previous gating process.","PeriodicalId":188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computational Chemistry","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142490530","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pre-training strategy for antiviral drug screening with low-data graph neural network: A case study in HIV-1 K103N reverse transcriptase.","authors":"Kajjana Boonpalit, Hathaichanok Chuntakaruk, Jiramet Kinchagawat, Peter Wolschann, Supot Hannongbua, Thanyada Rungrotmongkol, Sarana Nutanong","doi":"10.1002/jcc.27514","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/jcc.27514","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Graph neural networks (GNN) offer an alternative approach to boost the screening effectiveness in drug discovery. However, their efficacy is often hindered by limited datasets. To address this limitation, we introduced a robust GNN training framework, applied to various chemical databases to identify potent non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs) against the challenging K103N-mutated HIV-1 RT. Leveraging self-supervised learning (SSL) pre-training to tackle data scarcity, we screened 1,824,367 compounds, using multi-step approach that incorporated machine learning (ML)-based screening, analysis of absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME) prediction, drug-likeness properties, and molecular docking. Ultimately, 45 compounds were left as potential candidates with 17 of the compounds were previously identified as NNRTIs, exemplifying the model's efficacy. The remaining 28 compounds are anticipated to be repurposed for new uses. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations on repurposed candidates unveiled two promising preclinical drugs: one designed against Plasmodium falciparum and the other serving as an antibacterial agent. Both have superior binding affinity compared to anti-HIV drugs. This conceptual framework could be adapted for other disease-specific therapeutics, facilitating the identification of potent compounds effective against both WT and mutants while revealing novel scaffolds for drug design and discovery.</p>","PeriodicalId":188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computational Chemistry","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142454269","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fragment and torsion biasing algorithms for construction of small organic molecules in proteins using DOCK","authors":"John D. Bickel, Brock T. Boysan, Robert C. Rizzo","doi":"10.1002/jcc.27508","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/jcc.27508","url":null,"abstract":"The computational construction of small organic molecules (de novo design), directly in a protein binding site, is an effective means for generating novel ligands tailored to fit the pocket environment. In this work, we present two new methods, which aim to improve de novo design outcomes using (1) biasing algorithms to prioritize selection and/or acceptance of fragments and torsions during growth, and (2) parallel‐based clustering and pruning algorithms to remove duplicate molecules as candidate fragment are added. Large‐scale testing encompassing thousands of simulations were employed to interrogate the methods in terms of multiple metrics which include numbers of duplicate molecules generated, pairwise‐similarity, focused library reconstruction rates, fragment and torsion frequencies, fragment and torsion rank scores, interaction energy and drug‐likeness scores, and 3D pose comparisons. The biasing algorithms, particularly those that include fragment and torsion components simultaneously, led to molecules that more closely mimicked the distributions of fragments and torsions found in drug‐like libraries. The new parallel‐based clustering and pruning algorithms, compared with the existing serial approach, also led to larger ensembles comprised of topologically unique molecules with much greater efficiency by removing redundant growth paths.","PeriodicalId":188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computational Chemistry","volume":"40 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142487388","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Piotr Matczak, Philipp Buday, Stephan Kupfer, Helmar Görls, Grzegorz Mlostoń, Wolfgang Weigand
{"title":"Probing the performance of DFT in the structural characterization of [FeFe] hydrogenase models","authors":"Piotr Matczak, Philipp Buday, Stephan Kupfer, Helmar Görls, Grzegorz Mlostoń, Wolfgang Weigand","doi":"10.1002/jcc.27515","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/jcc.27515","url":null,"abstract":"In this work, a series of DFT and DFT-D methods is combined with double-<i>ζ</i> basis sets to benchmark their performance in predicting the structures of five newly synthesized hexacarbonyl diiron complexes with a bridging ligand featuring a <i>μ</i>-S<sub>2</sub>C<sub>3</sub> motif in a ring-containing unit functionalized with aromatic groups. Such complexes have been considered as [FeFe] hydrogenase catalytic site models with potential for eco-friendly energetic applications. According to this assessment, r<sup>2</sup>SCAN is identified as the density functional recommended for the reliable description of the molecular and crystal structures of the herein studied models. However, the butterfly (<i>μ</i>-S)<sub>2</sub>Fe<sub>2</sub> core of the models demonstrates a minor deformation of its optimized geometry obtained from both molecular and periodic calculations. The Fe<span></span>Fe bond length is slightly underestimated while the Fe<span></span>S bonds tend to be too long. Adding the D3(BJ) correction to r<sup>2</sup>SCAN does not lead to any improvement in the calculated structures.","PeriodicalId":188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computational Chemistry","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142444366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"High‐throughput molecular simulations of SARS‐CoV‐2 receptor binding domain mutants quantify correlations between dynamic fluctuations and protein expression","authors":"Victor Ovchinnikov, Martin Karplus","doi":"10.1002/jcc.27512","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/jcc.27512","url":null,"abstract":"Prediction of protein fitness from computational modeling is an area of active research in rational protein design. Here, we investigated whether protein fluctuations computed from molecular dynamics simulations can be used to predict the expression levels of SARS‐CoV‐2 receptor binding domain (RBD) mutants determined in the deep mutational scanning experiment of Starr <jats:italic>et al.</jats:italic> [<jats:italic>Science</jats:italic> (New York, N.Y.) 2022, <jats:italic>377</jats:italic>, 420] Specifically, we performed more than 0.7 milliseconds of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of 557 mutant RBDs in triplicate to achieve statistical significance under various simulation conditions. Our results show modest but significant anticorrelation in the range [−0.4, −0.3] between expression and RBD protein flexibility. A simple linear regression machine learning model achieved correlation coefficients in the range [0.7, 0.8], thus outperforming MD‐based models, but required about 25 mutations at each residue position for training.","PeriodicalId":188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computational Chemistry","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142440004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}