6. Trajectory visualization¶
Analysis are normally performed locally on a workstation, i.e. copy back all the files from the supercomputer to your local directory.
A typical analysis tasks reads the trajectory (XTC) or energy (EDR) file, computes quantities, and produces data files that can be plotted or processed further, e.g. using Python scripts. A strength of Gromacs is that it comes with a wide range of tools that each do one particular analysis task well (see the Gromacs manual and the Gromacs documentation).
6.1. Keeping the protein in one piece¶
If you just look at the output trajectory md.xtc
in VMD then
you will see that the protein can be split across the periodic
boundaries and that the simulation cell just looks like a distorted
prism. You should recenter the trajectory so that the protein is at
the center, remap the water molecules (and ions) to be located in a
more convenient unitcell representation.
We will use the gmx trjconv tool in Gromacs to center and remap our system.
Tip
gmx trjconv prompts the user with a number of questions that depend on the selected options. In the command line snippets below, the user input is directly fed to the standard input of trjconv with the printf TEXT | gmx trjconv “pipe” construct. In order to better understand the command, run it interactively without the pipe construct and manually provide the required information.
Center (-center
) on the Protein and remap all the molecules
(-pbc mol
) of the whole System:
printf "Protein\nSystem\n" | gmx trjconv -s md.tpr -f md.xtc -center -ur compact -pbc mol -o md_center.xtc
6.2. Pinning down a tumbling protein¶
It is often desirable to RMS-fit the protein on a reference structure (such as the first frame in the trajectory) to remove overall translation and rotation. In Gromacs, the gmx trjconv tool can also do more “trajectory conversion tasks”. After (1) centering and remapping the system, we want to (2) RMS-fit (due to technical limitations in gmx trjconv you cannot do both at the same time).
RMS-fit (-fit rot+trans
) to the protein backbone atoms in
the initial frame (supplied in the TPR file) and write out the
whole System:
printf "Backbone\nSystem\n" | gmx trjconv -s md.tpr -f md_center.xtc -fit rot+trans -o md_fit.xtc
6.3. Check our modified trajectory¶
Visualize in VMD:
vmd ../posres/posres.pdb md_fit.xtc
Note
If you don’t have a vmd command available on the command
line then launch VMD, load the posres/posres.pdb
file
( ), highlight your molecule 1
(“em.pdb”) and load the posres/md_fit.xtc
trajectory into your
molecule 1, . You
should see that the first frame (from the energy minimization) looks
as if the water is in a distorted box shape whereas all further frames
show a roughly spherical unit cell (the rhombic dodecahedron).