Extension of the CHARMM general force field to sulfonyl‐containing compounds and its utility in biomolecular simulations

Presented is an extension of the CHARMM General Force Field (CGenFF) to enable the modeling of sulfonyl-containing compounds. Model compounds containing chemical moieties such as sulfone, sulfonamide, sulfonate, and sulfamate were used as the basis for the parameter optimization. Targeting high-level quantum mechanical and experimental crystal data, the new parameters were optimized in a hierarchical fashion designed to maintain compatibility with the remainder of the CHARMM additive force field. The optimized parameters satisfactorily reproduced equilibrium geometries, vibrational frequencies, interactions with water, gas phase dipole moments, and dihedral potential energy scans. Validation involved both…