On the Hamiltonian replica exchange method for efficient sampling of biomolecular systems: Application to protein structure prediction

Motivated by the protein structure prediction problem, we develop two variants of the Hamiltonian replica exchange methods (REMs) for efficient configuration sampling, (1) the scaled hydrophobicity REM and (2) the phantom chain REM, and compare their performance with the ordinary REM. We first point out that the ordinary REM has a shortage for the application to large systems such as biomolecules and that the Hamiltonian REM, an alternative formulation of the REM, can give a remedy for it. We then propose two examples of the Hamiltonian REM that are suitable for a coarse-grained protein model. (1) The scaled hydrophobicity REM prepares replicas that are characterized by various strengths of hydrophobic…