Modeling the Self-Assembly and Stability of DHPC Micelles Using Atomic Resolution and Coarse Grained MD Simulations

Membrane mimics such as micelles and bicelles are widely used in experiments involving membrane proteins. With the aim of being able to carry out molecular dynamics simulations in environments comparable to experimental conditions, we set out to test the ability of both coarse grained and atomistic resolution force fields to model the experimentally observed behavior of the lipid 1,2-dihexanoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DHPC), which is a widely used lipid for biophysical characterization of membrane proteins. It becomes clear from our results that a satisfactory modeling of DHPC aggregates in solution poses different demands to the force field than do the modeling of bilayers. First, the representation of the short tailed lipid DHPC in the coarse grained force field MARTINI is assessed with the intend of successfully self-assemble micelles with structural characteristics comparable to experimental data. Then, the use of the recently presented polarizable water model in MARTINI is shown to be essential for producing micelles that are structurally in accordance with experiments. For the atomistic representations of DHPC micelles in solution the GROMOS96 force field with lipid parameters by A. Kukol fails to maintain stable micelles, whereas the most recent CHARMM36 lipid parameters and GROMOS96 with the so-called Berger lipid parameters both succeed in this regard.