Comparison of the MSMS and NanoShaper molecular surface triangulation codes in the TABI Poisson–Boltzmann solver

Abstract

The Poisson–Boltzmann (PB) implicit solvent model is a popular framework for studying the electrostatics of solvated biomolecules. In this model the dielectric interface between the biomolecule and solvent is often taken to be the molecular surface or solvent‐excluded surface (SES), and the quality of the SES triangulation is critical in boundary element simulations of the model. This work compares the performance of the MSMS and NanoShaper surface triangulation codes for a set of 38 biomolecules. While MSMS produces triangles of exceedingly small area and large aspect ratio, the two codes yield comparable values for the SES surface area and electrostatic solvation energy, where the latter calculations were performed using the treecode‐accelerated boundary integral (TABI) PB solver. However we found that NanoShaper is computationally more efficient and reliable than MSMS, especially when parameters are set to produce highly resolved triangulations.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
May 26, 2021
Source ID
10.1002/jcc.26692

Entities

People

  • Leighton Wilson
  • Robert Krasny

Organizations

  • National Science Foundation Division of Mathematical Sciences
  • United States Department of Defense
  • University of Michigan

Tags

Readers

  • Electrochemical Engineering/ Fuel Cell Technologies
  • Finite Element Method (FEM) for solving Partial Differential Equations (PDEs)
  • Nanocomposite Materials Science