Toward QM/MM Simulation of Enzymatic Reactions with the Drude Oscillator Polarizable Force Field

The polarization of the environment can influence the results from hybrid quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical (QM/MM) simulations of enzymatic reactions. In this article, we address several technical aspects in the development of polarizable QM/MM embedding using the Drude Oscillator (DO) force field. We propose a stable and converging update of the DO polarization state for geometry optimizations and a suitable treatment of the QM/MM-DO boundary when the QM and MM regions are separated by cutting through a covalent bond. We assess the performance of our approach by computing binding energies and geometries of three selected complexes relevant to biomolecular modeling, namely the water trimer, the N-methylacetamide dimer, and the cationic bis(benzene)sodium sandwich complex. Using a recently published MM-DO force field for proteins, we evaluate the effect of MM polarization on the QM/MM energy profiles of the enzymatic reactions catalyzed by chorismate mutase and by p-hydroxybenzoate hydroxylase. We find that inclusion of MM polarization affects the computed barriers by about 10%.