Multiscale Dynamics of Macromolecules Using Normal Mode Langevin

Proteins and other macromolecules have coupled dynamics over multiple time scales (from femtosecond to millisecond and beyond) that make resolving molecular dynamics challenging. We present an approach based on periodically decomposing the dynamics of a macromolecule into slow and fast modes based on a scalable coarse-grained normal mode analysis. A Langevin equation is used to propagate the slowest degrees of freedom while minimizing the nearly instantaneous degrees of freedom. We present numerical results showing that time steps of up to 1000 fs can be used, with real speedups of up to 200 times over plain molecular dynamics. We present results of successfully folding the Fip35 mutant of WW domain.