MDS General Workflow


Here I put together a general workflow that you can use to guide your Molecular dynamics simulation pipelines. In 5 steps you can go from having a steady snapshot to a dynamic protein system that you can use to understand how your protein works:
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1) Input: you need a PDB or CIF file for your protein-ligand of interest. This can be obtained from a crystal structure or a deep learning prediction.
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2)System Preparation: in this step you determine the topology of your system and assign specific force fields.
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3) System Stability: here the system is subjected to three different check points, namely, energy minimization, NVT, and NPT equilibration. This allows you to know where your system can handle the simulated conditions stablished in step 2. This step is crucial in your simulation. If this fails, start over.
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4) MD production: here you set up the conditions for your actual MDS run, for example, time of the simulation, seed, timestep, etc.
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5) Output: this is the fun part where you get to collect the data and start formulating hypothesis about your system.
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Hope this helps in your protein modeling journey! Leave in the comments any question you may have!
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Remember this is a general workflow. So some adjustments may be needed depending on the type of system you are working with. But this definitely can give you a head start.

Thank you,

Best,

Omar.

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