Multipolar Force Fields for Amide-I Spectroscopy from Conformational Dynamics of the Alanine Trimer

The dynamics and spectroscopy of N-methyl-acetamide (NMA) and trialanine in solution are characterized from molecular dynamics simulations using different energy functions, including a conventional point charge (PC)-based force field, one based on a multipolar (MTP) representation of the electrostatics, and a semiempirical DFT method. For the 1D infrared spectra, the frequency splitting between the two amide-I groups is 10 cm–1 from the PC, 13 cm–1 from the MTP, and 47 cm–1 from self-consistent charge density functional tight-binding (SCC-DFTB) simulations, compared with 25 cm–1 from experiment. The frequency trajectory required for the frequency fluctuation correlation function (FFCF) is determined from individual normal mode (INM) and full normal mode (FNM) analyses of the amide-I vibrations. The spectroscopy, time-zero magnitude of the FFCF C(t = 0), and the static component Δ02 from simulations using MTP and analysis based on FNM are all consistent with experiments for (Ala)3. Contrary to this, for the analysis excluding mode–mode coupling (INM), the FFCF decays to zero too rapidly and for simulations with a PC-based force field, the Δ02 is too small by a factor of two compared with experiments. Simulations with SCC-DFTB agree better with experiment for these observables than those from PC-based simulations. The conformational ensemble sampled from simulations using PCs is consistent with the literature (including PII, β, αR, and αL), whereas that covered by the MTP-based simulations is dominated by PII with some contributions from β and αR. This agrees with and confirms recently reported Bayesian-refined populations based on 1D infrared experiments. FNM analysis together with a MTP representation provides a meaningful model to correctly describe the dynamics of hydrated trialanine.