Volume 29, Issue 1 pp. 24-37

Structure and dynamics of phospholipid bilayers using recently developed general all-atom force fields

Lula Rosso

Lula Rosso

Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London, SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom

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Ian R. Gould

Corresponding Author

Ian R. Gould

Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London, SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom

Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London, SW7 2AZ, United KingdomSearch for more papers by this author
First published: 01 October 2007
Citations: 80

Abstract

Two fully hydrated pure-species phospholipids bilayers, 1,2-dimyristoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DMPC) and 1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphorylcholine (DOPC), in the fluid phase and explicit solvent have been studied using molecular dynamics simulation. Atom interactions were modeled using recently developed force fields based on AMBER with full atomistic details. Several representative liquid phase properties for the structure and dynamics of lipids with different length of hydrocarbon chains and different level of saturation have been reproduced without artificially biasing the system in order to match experimental data. In particular, as the new GAFF (General Amber Force Field) has not been explicitly developed to reproduce lipid characteristics and is naturally compatible with standard AMBER nucleic acids and proteins parameters, it is here proven a promising tool to study mixed lipid–protein processes as protein activity dependence on membrane composition, permeation of solute across membranes, and other cellular processes. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem, 2008

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