Yes, acetonitrile can be used as a solvent in MD simulations. In GROMACS, the initial step involves parameterizing and creating a topology for acetonitrile. Subsequently, during the 'gmx solvate' step, you would solvate the system using the pre-parameterized acetonitrile to set up the solvent environment.
To run a Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulation using acetonitrile as the solvent, you can follow these general steps:
System Setup:Prepare the protein or biomolecule of interest in the desired conformation. Add water molecules around the biomolecule to create a water box. Replace some water molecules with acetonitrile molecules to create an acetonitrile box.
Parameterization:Obtain force field parameters for the acetonitrile molecules. Popular force fields like CHARMM, AMBER, or OPLS typically have parameters for common organic solvents like acetonitrile. If parameters are not readily available, you may need to parameterize the acetonitrile molecules using quantum mechanical calculations or other methods.
Energy Minimization:Minimize the energy of the system to remove any steric clashes or bad contacts between atoms.
Equilibration:Perform several rounds of equilibration to adjust the temperature and pressure of the system. For a solvent like acetonitrile, you may need to perform equilibration in the NVT (constant Number of particles, Volume, and Temperature) and NPT (constant Number of particles, Pressure, and Temperature) ensembles.
Production MD:After equilibration, run the production MD simulation for the desired time period. Save the trajectory for further analysis.
Regarding the use of acetonitrile as a solvent in GROMACS and DESMOND:
In GROMACS: GROMACS is a popular software package for MD simulations, and it is flexible enough to handle a wide range of solvents, including acetonitrile. You can use GROMACS with appropriate force field parameters for acetonitrile and set up the simulation as described above.
In DESMOND: DESMOND is a commercial MD simulation software developed by D.E. Shaw Research. While DESMOND is primarily used for explicit-solvent simulations in water, it may not have built-in parameters for acetonitrile. Therefore, it might not be as straightforward to use acetonitrile as a solvent in DESMOND compared to GROMACS, which has a more extensive range of force fields and options for custom parameterization.
Overall, GROMACS would be a more suitable choice if you specifically want to use acetonitrile as a solvent in your MD simulation due to its flexibility and support for a wide range of force fields and solvents. However, if you have access to DESMOND and would like to use acetonitrile, you may need to explore custom parameterization options or consider other solvent models supported by the software.