Effective atom volumes for implicit solvent models: comparison between Voronoi volumes and minimum fluctuation volumes
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Updated: Sep 24, 2026

An Analog Macroscopic Technique for Studying Molecular Hydrodynamic Processes in Dense Gases and Liquids
Published on: December 4, 2017
Michael Schaefer1, Christian Bartels, Fabrice Leclerc
1Laboratoire de Chimie Biophysique, ISIS, Université Louis Pasteur, 4 rue Blaise Pascal, 67000 Strasbourg, France.
Abstract:
An essential element of implicit solvent models, such as the generalized Born method, is a knowledge of the volume associated with the individual atoms of the solute. Two approaches for determining atomic volumes for the generalized Born model are described; one is based on Voronoi polyhedra and the other, on minimizing the fluctuations in the overall volume of the solute. Volumes to be used with various parameter sets for protein and nucleic acids in the CHARMM force field are determined from a large set of known structures. The volumes resulting from the two different approaches are compared with respect to various parameters, including the size and solvent accessibility of the structures from which they are determined. The question of whether to include hydrogens in the atomic representation of the solute volume is examined. Copyright 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Comput Chem 22: 1857-1879, 2001
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