arXiv subjects

M. Sega

Publications and source records attributed to M. Sega.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2016

Extended friction elucidates the breakdown of fast water transport in graphene oxide membranes

The understanding of water transport in graphene oxide (GO) membranes stands out as a major theoretical problem in graphene research. Notwithstanding the intense efforts devoted to the subject in the recent years, a consolidated picture of water transport in GO membranes is yet to emerge. By performing mesoscale simulations of water transport in ultrathin GO membranes, we show that even small amounts of oxygen functionalities can lead to a dramatic drop of the GO permeability, in line with experimental findings. The coexistence of bulk viscous dissipation and spatially extended molecular friction results in a major decrease of both slip and bulk flow, thereby suppressing the fast water transport regime observed in pristine graphene nanochannels. Inspection of the flow structure reveals an inverted curvature in the near-wall region, which connects smoothly with a parabolic profile in the bulk region. Such inverted curvature is a distinctive signature of the coexistence between single-particle Langevin friction and collective hydrodynamics. The present mesoscopic model with spatially extended friction may offer a computationally efficient tool for future simulations of water transport in nanomaterials.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2010

Dominant folding pathways of a peptide chain, from ab-initio quantum-mechanical simulations

Using the Dominant Reaction Pathways method, we perform an ab-initio quantum-mechanical simulation of a conformational transition of a peptide chain. The method we propose makes it possible to investigate the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of these systems, without resorting to an empirical representation of the molecular force field. It also allows to study rare transitions involving rearrangements in the electronic structure. By comparing the results of the ab-initio simulation with those obtained employing a standard force field, we discuss its capability to describe the non-equilibrium dynamics of conformational transitions.

q-bio.BM↗

arXiv2010

Puckering Free Energy of Pyranoses Using a Combined Metadynamics-Umbrella Sampling Approach

We present the results of a combined metadynamics-umbrella sampling investigation of the puckered conformers of pyranoses described using the gromos 45a4 force field. The free energy landscape of Cremer-Pople puckering coordinates has been calculated for the whole series of alpha and beta aldohexoses. We show that the 45a4 force field parameters fail in reproducing proper free energy differences between chair conformers for many of the inspected monosaccharides. In the extreme cases of galactose, mannose and allose, the experimentally non-detectable inverted chair conformers become even substantially populated. The opposite behavior is observed in the case of idose, which is the only experimentally known aldohexose that shows equilibrium between chair and inverted chair. We suggest a modification to the gromos 45a4 parameter set, which improves considerably the accordance of simulation results with theoretical and experimental estimates of puckering free energies.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2009

Ensemble Inequivalence in Single Molecule Experiments

In bulk systems the calculation of the main thermodynamic quantities leads to the same expectation values in the thermodynamic limit, regardless of the choice of the statistical ensemble. Single linear molecules can be still regarded as statistical systems, where the thermodynamic limit is represented by infinitely long chains. The question of equivalence between different ensembles is not at all obvious and has been addressed in the literature, with sometimes contradicting conclusions. We address this problem by studying the scaling properties of the ensemble difference for two different chain models, as a function of the degree of polymerization. By characterizing the scaling behavior of the difference between the isotensional (Gibbs) and isometric (Helmholtz) ensembles in the transition from the low-stretching to the high-stretching regime, we show that ensemble equivalence cannot be reached for macroscopic chains in the low force regime, and we characterize the transition from the inequivalence to the equivalence regime.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2008

Dominant Reaction Pathways in High Dimensional Systems

This paper is devoted to the development of a theoretical and computational framework to efficiently sample the statistically significant thermally activated reaction pathways, in multi-dimensional systems obeying Langevin dynamics. We show how to obtain the set of most probable reaction pathways and compute the corrections due to quadratic thermal fluctuations around such trajectories. We discuss how to obtain predictions for the evolution of arbitrary observables and how to generate conformations which are representative of the transition state ensemble. We present an illustrative implementation of our method by studying the diffusion of a point particle in a 2-dimensional funneled external potential.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2007

Quantitative Protein Dynamics from Dominant Folding Pathways

We develop a theoretical approach to the protein folding problem based on out-of-equilibrium stochastic dynamics. Within this framework, the computational difficulties related to the existence of large time scale gaps in the protein folding problem are removed and simulating the entire reaction in atomistic details using existing computers becomes feasible. In addition, this formalism provides a natural framework to investigate the relationships between thermodynamical and kinetic aspects of the folding. For example, it is possible to show that, in order to have a large probability to remain unchanged under Langevin diffusion, the native state has to be characterized by a small conformational entropy. We discuss how to determine the most probable folding pathway, to identify configurations representative of the transition state and to compute the most probable transition time. We perform an illustrative application of these ideas, studying the conformational evolution of alanine di-peptide, within an all-atom model based on the empiric GROMOS96 force field.

q-bio.QM↗

arXiv2006

Dominant Pathways in Protein Folding

We present a method to investigate the kinetics of protein folding on a long time-scale and the dynamics underlying the formation of secondary and tertiary structures during the entire reaction. The approach is based on the formal analogy between thermal and quantum diffusion: by writing the solution of the Fokker-Planck equation for the time-evolution of a protein in a viscous heat-bath in terms of a path integral, we derive a Hamilton-Jacobi variational principle from which we are able to compute the most probable pathway of folding. The method is applied to the folding of the Villin Headpiece Subdomain, in the framework of a Go-model. We have found that, in this model, the transition occurs through an initial collapsing phase driven by the starting coil configuration and a later rearrangement phase, in which secondary structures are formed and all computed paths display strong similarities. This method is completely general, does not require the prior knowledge of any reaction coordinate and represents an efficient tool to perfom ab-initio simulations of the entire folding process with available computers.

q-bio.BM↗