Molecular dynamics simulations have become instrumental in replacing our
view of proteins as relatively rigid structures with the realization
that they were dynamic systems, whose internal motions play a functional
role. Over the years, such simulations have become a central part of
biophysics. Applications of molecular dynamics in biophysics range over
many areas. They are used in the structure determination of
macromolecules with x-ray and NMR data, the modelling of unknown
structures from their sequence, the study of enzyme mechanisms, the
estimation of ligand-binding free energies, the evaluation of the role
of conformational change in protein function, and drug design for
targets of known structures.
The widespread application of molecular dynamics and related
methodologies suggests that it would be useful to have available an
introductory self-contained course by which students with a relatively
limited background in chemistry, biology and computer literacy, can
learn the fundamentals of the field. This Guide to Biomolecular
Simulations tries to fill this need. The Guide consists of six
chapters which provide the fundamentals of the field and six chapters
which introduce the reader to more specialized but important
applications of the methodology.