On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 7:31 AM, Aronica, Pietro <
pietro.aronica07.imperial.ac.uk> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have a solvated restart file and its appropriate prmtop. On the last
> line of the restart, there are the three dimensions of the box (all three
> equal, because I used solvateoct) and the three angles. I have created a
> pdb file from the restart and the prmtop using cpptraj (center the protein,
> then autoimage) and then used this<
> http://ambermd.org/tutorials/advanced/tutorial16/#Estimate_Periodic_Box_Size>
> file to calculate the box dimensions.
After glancing at that script, it seems to me that it is *only* for
rectangular boxes. Since you used a truncated octahedron, it does not
apply. Basically what that script does is take the waters and draw a
rectangular box around it that encompasses all atomic centers. Which runs
the implicit assumption that all particles are part of the same unit cell.
This will necessarily give you a periodic box that is at least large
enough, but almost always *too* large. Amber images centers of mass of
individual molecules, which means that some of the atoms -- like a
particular hydrogen -- may actually be protruding from its unit cell and
the image that is in the unit cell is on the *other* side of the box. But
this would lead to breaking bonds over periodic boundaries and would be a
visualization and analysis headache, so it is what it is.
tleap goes a step further when creating its box dimensions. It not only
encloses all atom centers in the target box, but adds a buffer region
roughly equivalent to the vdW radius of each atom near the boundary. So
the resulting boxes are usually *way* too big (relative to the "true" box
size that you get after running NpT or the approximation that uses a
bounding box like the script above).
The output is very different from the dimensions given at the bottom of the
> restart file. My question is, then, how can I calculate the "correct"
> dimensions from the pdb?
Others may have a better answer than me, but the approach I usually take
is: don't calculate it if you don't have to. The box was already generated
for you by tleap -- just use that one. Especially for a non-orthgonal cell
that uses familiar (rather than triclinic) imaging, it's much easier just
to take the box dimensions that tleap gave you and use NpT to equilibrate
the density.
What are the necessary calculations? Also, is there a way that does not
> involve vmd?
All that VMD script is doing is taking the minimum x, y, and z dimensions
and subtracting it from the maximum x, y, and z dimensions of all water
atoms in a system. You can do this just as easily with your own script.
> Somewhat unrelated, is there an amber functionality that outputs a pdb's
> overall charge? I know there's a leap command, but I tried looking for a
> command-line version and couldn't find one.
>
PDBs don't have charges in the sense that topology files do. You can use
ParmEd to calculate the net charge of a prmtop file using the following
script (let's call it parmed.in):
parm <your.prmtop>
netCharge :*
Then run it with parmed.py -i parmed.in
You can actually *also* use ParmEd to calculate the same box that the VMD
script does, using something like this:
parm <your.prmtop>
netCharge :*
!!
xmin = xmax = ymin = ymax = zmin = zmax = None
for atom in amber_prmtop.parm.atoms
if atom.residue.name != 'WAT': continue
if xmin is None:
xmin = xmax = atom.xx
ymin = ymax = atom.xy
zmin = zmax = atom.xz
else:
xmin = min(xmin, atom.xx)
xmax = max(xmax, atom.xx)
ymin = min(ymin, atom.xy)
ymax = max(ymax, atom.xy)
zmin = min(zmin, atom.xz)
zmax = max(zmax, atom.xz)
print('Box dimensions: %s x %s x %s' % (xmax-xmin, ymax-ymin, zmax-zmin))
!!
This time you need the -e flag to have it run the Python code:
parmed.py -i parmed.in -e
But again, this doesn't really apply to a truncated octahedron generated by
tleap.
HTH,
Jason
--
Jason M. Swails
BioMaPS,
Rutgers University
Postdoctoral Researcher
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Received on Wed Jul 22 2015 - 05:30:02 PDT
