Another way to try to understand what is going on wrong is to cut away the residue 1 (atom 1) and see what happens: in this case you will understand if the "guilty" is the residue 1 (as LINCS seems, at least, to suggest) or anything else in the protein.

Cheers

Luca




Dear Luca, dear all,
thank you for your hints. I made some trials with my systems and these are
my answers to your questions:

- my system is a protein (with or w/o ligand) in solvent (water SPC).
Following your suggestions, I tried to perform an EM on the protein w/o
ligand after the editconf step (i.e. I created the topology with pdb2gmx,
created a cubic box with editconf, then I used grompp+mdrun to perform EM).
I received the same error: the minimization starts, performs 37 steps, then
stops with the "stepsize too small...." communication. The energy in this
case is -3.06e+4 (one order of magnitude higher than the solvated system)
but still negative, and the maximum force is still "inf on atom 1". So
minimizing in vacuo does not help to solve the problem. This atom 1 is the
Nter of the protein, it is belonging to a Ser and I did not charge it
explicitly with pdb2gmx (i.e. I did not use the flag -ter) but it is bound
to 3 H in the .gro file.

- If I look at the protein with VMD or other visualizing tools, it seems to
me that no major problems are present on the structure. In particular, atom
1 is not "broken" or something similar, I can't see no "aberrations". I
don't know how to check if something goes wrong apart from visualization, do
you know some tools that could automatically check the file? To the best of
my knowledge, gmxcheck performs checks only on trajectories, or can I use it
also on single structures?

- I also tried to continue anyway after the minimization step with the PR MD
in NVT, but it did not start because of a lot of LINCS error. It suggests me
that some distortions are present in my structure, but if I cannot minimize
it, how to relieve this problem?

I copy&paste below the .log file for this new minimization in vacuo. The
parameters I used are the same for the minimization in solvent.
Any help will be appreciated.
Thank you very much and best regards

Input Parameters:
    integrator           = steep
    nsteps               = 50000
    init_step            = 0
    ns_type              = Grid
    nstlist              = 5
    ndelta               = 2
    nstcomm              = 1
    comm_mode            = Linear
    nstlog               = 100
    nstxout              = 100
    nstvout              = 100
    nstfout              = 0
    nstenergy            = 100
    nstxtcout            = 0
    init_t               = 0
    delta_t              = 0.001
    xtcprec              = 1000
    nkx                  = 70
    nky                  = 70
    nkz                  = 70
    pme_order            = 4
    ewald_rtol           = 1e-05
    ewald_geometry       = 0
    epsilon_surface      = 0
    optimize_fft         = TRUE
    ePBC                 = xyz
    bPeriodicMols        = FALSE
    bContinuation        = FALSE
    bShakeSOR            = FALSE
    etc                  = No
    epc                  = No
    epctype              = Isotropic
    tau_p                = 1
    ref_p (3x3):
       ref_p[    0]={ 0.00000e+00,  0.00000e+00,  0.00000e+00}
       ref_p[    1]={ 0.00000e+00,  0.00000e+00,  0.00000e+00}
       ref_p[    2]={ 0.00000e+00,  0.00000e+00,  0.00000e+00}
    compress (3x3):
       compress[    0]={ 0.00000e+00,  0.00000e+00,  0.00000e+00}
       compress[    1]={ 0.00000e+00,  0.00000e+00,  0.00000e+00}
     compress[    2]={ 0.00000e+00,  0.00000e+00,  0.00000e+00}
    refcoord_scaling     = No
    posres_com (3):
       posres_com[0]= 0.00000e+00
       posres_com[1]= 0.00000e+00
       posres_com[2]= 0.00000e+00
    posres_comB (3):
       posres_comB[0]= 0.00000e+00
       posres_comB[1]= 0.00000e+00
       posres_comB[2]= 0.00000e+00
    andersen_seed        = 815131
    rlist                = 1
    rtpi                 = 0.05
    coulombtype          = PME
    rcoulomb_switch      = 0
    rcoulomb             = 1
    vdwtype              = Cut-off
    rvdw_switch          = 0
    rvdw                 = 1.2
    epsilon_r            = 1
    epsilon_rf           = 1
    tabext               = 1
    implicit_solvent     = No
    gb_algorithm         = Still
    gb_epsilon_solvent   = 80
    nstgbradii           = 1
    rgbradii             = 2
    gb_saltconc          = 0
    gb_obc_alpha         = 1
    gb_obc_beta          = 0.8
    gb_obc_gamma         = 4.85
    sa_surface_tension   = 2.092
DispCorr             = No
    free_energy          = no
    init_lambda          = 0
    sc_alpha             = 0
    sc_power             = 0
    sc_sigma             = 0.3
    delta_lambda         = 0
    nwall                = 0
    wall_type            = 9-3
    wall_atomtype[0]     = -1
    wall_atomtype[1]     = -1
    wall_density[0]      = 0
    wall_density[1]      = 0
    wall_ewald_zfac      = 3
    pull                 = no
    disre                = No
    disre_weighting      = Conservative
    disre_mixed          = FALSE
    dr_fc                = 1000
    dr_tau               = 0
    nstdisreout          = 100
    orires_fc            = 0
    orires_tau           = 0
    nstorireout          = 100
    dihre-fc             = 1000
    em_stepsize          = 0.1
    em_tol               = 1000
    niter                = 20
    fc_stepsize          = 0
    nstcgsteep           = 1000
    nbfgscorr            = 10
    ConstAlg             = Lincs
shake_tol            = 0.0001
    lincs_order          = 4
    lincs_warnangle      = 30
    lincs_iter           = 1
    bd_fric              = 0
    ld_seed              = 1993
    cos_accel            = 0
    deform (3x3):
       deform[    0]={ 0.00000e+00,  0.00000e+00,  0.00000e+00}
       deform[    1]={ 0.00000e+00,  0.00000e+00,  0.00000e+00}
       deform[    2]={ 0.00000e+00,  0.00000e+00,  0.00000e+00}
    userint1             = 0
    userint2             = 0
    userint3             = 0
    userint4             = 0
    userreal1            = 0
    userreal2            = 0
    userreal3            = 0
    userreal4            = 0
grpopts:
    nrdf:        6039
    ref_t:           0
    tau_t:           0
anneal:          No
ann_npoints:           0
    acc:            0           0           0
    nfreeze:           N           N           N
    energygrp_flags[  0]: 0
    efield-x:
       n = 0
    efield-xt:
       n = 0
efield-y:
       n = 0
    efield-yt:
       n = 0
    efield-z:
       n = 0
    efield-zt:
       n = 0
    bQMMM                = FALSE
    QMconstraints        = 0
    QMMMscheme           = 0
    scalefactor          = 1
qm_opts:
    ngQM                 = 0
Table routines are used for coulomb: TRUE
Table routines are used for vdw:     FALSE
Will do PME sum in reciprocal space.

++++ PLEASE READ AND CITE THE FOLLOWING REFERENCE ++++
U. Essman, L. Perela, M. L. Berkowitz, T. Darden, H. Lee and L. G. Pedersen
A smooth particle mesh Ewald method
J. Chem. Phys. 103 (1995) pp. 8577-8592
-------- -------- --- Thank You --- -------- --------

Using a Gaussian width (1/beta) of 0.320163 nm for Ewald
Cut-off's:   NS: 1   Coulomb: 1   LJ: 1.2
System total charge: -3.000
Generated table with 4400 data points for Ewald.
Tabscale = 2000 points/nm
Generated table with 4400 data points for LJ6.
Tabscale = 2000 points/nm
Generated table with 4400 data points for LJ12.
Tabscale = 2000 points/nm
Generated table with 4400 data points for 1-4 COUL.
Tabscale = 2000 points/nm
Generated table with 4400 data points for 1-4 LJ6.
Tabscale = 2000 points/nm
Generated table with 4400 data points for 1-4 LJ12.
Tabscale = 2000 points/nm
Configuring nonbonded kernels...
Testing x86_64 SSE2 support... present.


Removing pbc first time
Initiating Steepest Descents
Max number of connections per atom is 27
Total number of connections is 27956
Max number of graph edges per atom is 4
Total number of graph edges is 4086
Started Steepest Descents on node 0 Mon May 24 12:03:01 2010
Steepest Descents:
    Tolerance (Fmax)   =  1.00000e+03
    Number of steps    =        50000
Grid: 7 x 7 x 7 cells
            Step           Time         Lambda
               0        0.00000        0.00000

    Energies (kJ/mol)
         G96Bond       G96Angle    Proper Dih.  Improper Dih.          LJ-14
     2.40716e+03    1.23569e+03    6.85831e+02    8.70819e+01   2.11992e-314
      Coulomb-14        LJ (SR)        LJ (LR)   Coulomb (SR)   Coul. recip.
    2.11992e-314   -2.19860e+03   -1.52663e+02   -6.70307e+03   -2.59368e+04
       Potential Pressure (bar)
    -3.05754e+04            nan
            Step           Time         Lambda
               1        1.00000        0.00000

            Step           Time         Lambda
               2        2.00000        0.00000

            Step           Time         Lambda
               3        3.00000        0.00000

            Step           Time         Lambda
               4        4.00000        0.00000

            Step           Time         Lambda
               5        5.00000        0.00000

            Step           Time         Lambda
               6        6.00000        0.00000

            Step           Time         Lambda
               7        7.00000        0.00000

            Step           Time         Lambda
               8        8.00000        0.00000

            Step           Time         Lambda
               9        9.00000        0.00000

            Step           Time         Lambda
              10       10.00000        0.00000

..........(same thing until)

           Step           Time         Lambda
              37       37.00000        0.00000


Stepsize too small, or no change in energy.
Converged to machine precision,
but not to the requested precision Fmax<  1000

Steepest Descents converged to machine precision in 38 steps,
but did not reach the requested Fmax<  1000.
Potential Energy  = -3.05753603909389e+04
Maximum force     =                   inf on atom 1
Norm of force     =                   inf

Anna


Message: 2
Date: Fri, 21 May 2010 14:44:04 +0200
From: Luca Mollica<luca.moll...@ibs.fr>
Subject: Re: [gmx-users] stepsize too small ... but potential energy
        negative!
To: Discussion list for GROMACS users<gmx-users@gromacs.org>
Message-ID:<4bf68014.1060...@ibs.fr>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Dear Anna,
are you talking about a system "in vacuo" or in solvent ?
If you have placed the protein in water w/o minimizing it before
solvation, probabily an "in vacuo" minimization could be useful for your
system before moving into the solvated case. Moreover, are you sure that
the protein does not have "broken" residue or something like that ?
Sometimes, the completion of topology creation step goes fine but
something wrong (on the gromacs side, apart from visualization) with
sidechains or portion of the proteins that are generated by other
softwares/servers.
I do not think it's a ligand problem, BTW.

Cheers

Luca

Message: 3
Date: Fri, 21 May 2010 14:46:28 +0200
From: Luca Mollica<luca.moll...@ibs.fr>
Subject: Re: [gmx-users] stepsize too small ... but potential energy
        negative!
To: gmx-users@gromacs.org
Message-ID:<4bf680a4.3060...@ibs.fr>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Moreover,
the problem is not the potential energy, but the force that must converge.
The "inf" there about force and about atom 1 tells me that the computed
force has problems, indeed.
Which is atom 1 ? Is the protein Nter neutral or charged ? Or is atom 1
an atom from the ligand ?

Cheers

L





--
gmx-users mailing list    gmx-users@gromacs.org
http://lists.gromacs.org/mailman/listinfo/gmx-users
Please search the archive at http://www.gromacs.org/search before posting!
Please don't post (un)subscribe requests to the list. Use the www interface or send it to gmx-users-requ...@gromacs.org.
Can't post? Read http://www.gromacs.org/mailing_lists/users.php

Reply via email to