Dear All, 
        I have a system containing several protein fragments, because I extract all residues within the distance of 20A of an inhibitor, I want to do NPT MD with very weakly restraint (1.0 kcal/mol*A^2) to those residues in the 15~20A shell, so I did the MD in following four steps, and everything is OK.
1. mpirun -np 8 pmemd.MPI -O -i min1.in -o min1.out -p system.prmtop -c system.inpcrd -r system_min1.rst -ref system.inpcrd (restrain solute minimize water)
2. mpirun -np 8 pmemd.MPI -O -i min2.in -o min2.out -p system.prmtop -c system_min1.rst -r system_min2.rst (minimize the whole system)
3. mpirun -np 8 pmemd.MPI -O -i heat.in -o heat.out -p system.prmtop -c system_min2.rst -r system_heat.rst -x system_heat.mdcrd -ref system_min2.rst (weakly restrain solute and heat the system from 0K to 300K in 20ps)
4. mpirun -np 8 pmemd.MPI -O -i equ_product.in -o equ_product.out -p system.prmtop -c system_heat.rst -r system_equ2_product.rst -x system_equ2_product.mdcrd -ref system_heat.rst (do NPT MD at 300K for 1ns)
When I analysis the MD trajectory, I found the backbone RMSD is not very stable in 1ns simulation, so I want to do another 1ns MD simulation based on the step 4 as follows:
mpirun -np 8 pmemd.MPI -O -i equ_product.in -o product_2.out -p system.prmtop -c system_heat.rst -r system_product_2.rst -x system_product_2.mdcrd -ref system_heat.rst
at this moment, I found a problem that the temperature increased to very high, while in step 4 the temperature is very stable, average temperature is 300.03K, temperature RMS fluctuations is 1.84K. At the same time, "Density" decreased to the value almost equal to the initial value in step 4(0.9571)
 NSTEP =       50   TIME(PS) =    1020.100  TEMP(K) =   483.64  PRESS =  3604.9
                                            -------------------
 Etot   =    -45928.6887  EKtot   =     29393.8883  EPtot      =    -75322.5770
 BOND   =      1159.7388  ANGLE   =      3198.1474  DIHED      =      3618.2022
 1-4 NB =      1283.6419  1-4 EEL =     11045.3955  VDWAALS    =      9122.6836
 EELEC  =   -111006.6701  EHBOND  =         0.0000  RESTRAINT  =      6256.2836
 EAMBER (non-restraint)  =    -81578.8606
 EKCMT  =     15282.0460  VIRIAL  =     -8022.8348  VOLUME     =    299419.6738
                                                    Density    =         0.9879
                                                    ---------------------------
 NSTEP =      100   TIME(PS) =    1020.200  TEMP(K) =   483.56  PRESS =  3562.6
                                            -------------------
 Etot   =    -48449.6942  EKtot   =     29388.6835  EPtot      =    -77838.3777
 BOND   =      1155.9994  ANGLE   =      3288.6053  DIHED      =      3788.3022
 1-4 NB =      1279.2409  1-4 EEL =     11012.7785  VDWAALS    =      9584.3672
 EELEC  =   -109772.8083  EHBOND  =         0.0000  RESTRAINT  =      1825.1371
 EAMBER (non-restraint)  =    -79663.5149
 EKCMT  =     15907.0210  VIRIAL  =     -7323.8078  VOLUME     =    302009.3056
                                                    Density    =         0.9900
                                                    ---------------------------
but when I didn't restrain those residues within 15~20A shell and restart MD based on step 4 as follows:
mpirun -np 8 pmemd.MPI -O -i equ_product.in -o product_2.out -p system.prmtop -c system_heat.rst -r system_product_2.rst -x system_product_2.mdcrd
everything looks good:
 NSTEP =       50   TIME(PS) =    1020.100  TEMP(K) =   300.26  PRESS =   -45.9
 Etot   =    -65782.2433  EKtot   =     18248.4030  EPtot      =    -84030.6463
 BOND   =       988.3259  ANGLE   =      2784.8558  DIHED      =      3480.3918
 1-4 NB =      1207.0591  1-4 EEL =     11079.5310  VDWAALS    =      7853.6265
 EELEC  =   -111424.4364  EHBOND  =         0.0000  RESTRAINT  =         0.0000
 EKCMT  =      7287.8821  VIRIAL  =      7583.4197  VOLUME     =    298489.4102
                                                    Density    =         1.0137
 Ewald error estimate:   0.1396E-03                 
 
 NSTEP =      100   TIME(PS) =    1020.200  TEMP(K) =   301.29  PRESS =  -290.3
 Etot   =    -65747.3646  EKtot   =     18311.4818  EPtot      =    -84058.8464
 BOND   =       988.4036  ANGLE   =      2795.8995  DIHED      =      3576.7810
 1-4 NB =      1208.2661  1-4 EEL =     11100.0828  VDWAALS    =      7787.7048
 EELEC  =   -111515.9842  EHBOND  =         0.0000  RESTRAINT  =         0.0000
 EKCMT  =      7325.2614  VIRIAL  =      9195.5766  VOLUME     =    298360.9939
                                                    Density    =         1.0141
 Ewald error estimate:   0.1364E-04
So I think these two problems (temperature and density) are related to the restrain in NPT MD, which rst file should I use as reference coordinates in restart NPT MD? or I can't make use of the finished 1ns MD and must do a new MD completely for 2ns as step4? Moreover it seems that it's not correct using "system_heat.rst" as reference coordinates in step4? then how to restrain some residues in a NPT MD? 
    Any advice will be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance & Best regards!
    yours sincerely, Zhihong Yu
PS: "equ_product.in" file is attached for your information
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Received on Wed Nov 01 2006 - 06:07:14 PST