Exhaustive Mapping of the Conformational Space of Natural Dipeptides by the DFT-D3//COSMO-RS Method

0560534 - ÚOCHB 2023 RIV US eng J - Journal Article
Kalvoda, Tadeáš - Culka, Martin - Rulíšek, Lubomír - Andris, Erik
Exhaustive Mapping of the Conformational Space of Natural Dipeptides by the DFT-D3//COSMO-RS Method.
Journal of Physical Chemistry B. Roč. 126, č. 32 (2022), s. 5949-5958. ISSN 1520-6106. E-ISSN 1520-5207
R&D Projects: GA ČR(CZ) GA20-08772S; GA MŠMT(CZ) EF16_019/0000729
Research Infrastructure: e-INFRA CZ - 90140
Institutional support: RVO:61388963
Keywords : protein structure * alanine * energy
OECD category: Physical chemistry
Impact factor: 3.3, year: 2022
Method of publishing: Limited access
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcb.2c02861

We extensively mapped energy landscapes and conformations of 22 (including three His protonation states) proteinogenic α-amino acids in trans configuration and the corresponding 484 (222) dipeptides. To mimic the environment in a protein chain, the N- and C-termini of the studied systems were capped with acetyl and N-methylamide groups, respectively. We systematically varied the main chain dihedral angles (ϕ, ψ) by 40° steps and all side chain angles by 90° or 120° steps. We optimized the molecular geometries with the GFN2-xTB semiempirical (SQM) method and performed single point density functional theory calculations at the BP86-D3/DGauss-DZVP//COSMO-RS level in water, 1-octanol, N,N-dimethylformamide, and n-hexane. For each restrained (nonequilibrium) structure, we also calculated energy gradients (in water) and natural atomic charges. The exhaustive and unprecedented QM-based sampling enabled us to construct Ramachandran plots of quantum mechanical (QM(BP86-D3)//COSMO-RS) energies calculated on SQM structures, for all 506 (484 dipeptides and 22 amino acids) studied systems. We showed how the character of an amino acid side chain influences the conformational space of single amino acids and dipeptides. With clustering techniques, we were able to identify unique minima of amino acids and dipeptides (i.e., minima on the GFN2-xTB potential energy surfaces) and analyze the distribution of their BP86-D3//COSMO-RS conformational energies in all four solvents. We also derived an empirical formula for the number of unique minima based on the overall number of rotatable bonds within each peptide. The final peptide conformer data set (PeptideCs) comprises over 400 million structures, all of them annotated with QM(BP86-D3)//COSMO-RS energies. Thanks to its completeness and unbiased nature, the PeptideCs can serve, inter alia, as a data set for the validation of new methods for predicting the energy landscapes of protein structures. This data set may also prove to be useful in the development and reparameterization of biomolecular force fields.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0333407


Research data: Figshare