genion

Main Table of Contents

VERSION 4.5
Thu 26 Aug 2010


Description

genion replaces solvent molecules by monoatomic ions at the position of the first atoms with the most favorable electrostatic potential or at random. The potential is calculated on all atoms, using normal GROMACS particle based methods (in contrast to other methods based on solving the Poisson-Boltzmann equation). The potential is recalculated after every ion insertion. If specified in the run input file, a reaction field, shift function or user function can be used. For the user function a table file can be specified with the option -table. The group of solvent molecules should be continuous and all molecules should have the same number of atoms. The user should add the ion molecules to the topology file or use the -p option to automatically modify the topology.

The ion molecule type, residue and atom names in all force fields are the capitalized element names without sign. Ions which can have multiple charge states get the multiplicilty added, without sign, for the uncommon states only.

With the option -pot the potential can be written as B-factors in a pdb file (for visualisation using e.g. rasmol). The unit of the potential is 1000 kJ/(mol e), the scaling be changed with the -scale option.

For larger ions, e.g. sulfate we recommended to use genbox.

Files

optionfilenametypedescription
-s topol.tpr Input Run input file: tpr tpb tpa
-table table.xvg Input, Opt. xvgr/xmgr file
-n index.ndx Input, Opt. Index file
-o out.gro Output Structure file: gro g96 pdb etc.
-g genion.log Output Log file
-pot pot.pdb Output, Opt. Protein data bank file
-p topol.top In/Out, Opt. Topology file

Other options

optiontypedefaultdescription
-[no]h gmx_bool no Print help info and quit
-[no]version gmx_bool no Print version info and quit
-nice int 19 Set the nicelevel
-xvg enum xmgrace xvg plot formatting: xmgrace, xmgr or none
-np int 0 Number of positive ions
-pname string NA Name of the positive ion
-pq int 1 Charge of the positive ion
-nn int 0 Number of negative ions
-nname string CL Name of the negative ion
-nq int -1 Charge of the negative ion
-rmin real 0.6 Minimum distance between ions
-[no]random gmx_bool yes Use random placement of ions instead of based on potential. The rmin option should still work
-seed int 1993 Seed for random number generator
-scale real 0.001 Scaling factor for the potential for -pot
-conc real 0 Specify salt concentration (mol/liter). This will add sufficient ions to reach up to the specified concentration as computed from the volume of the cell in the input tpr file. Overrides the -np and nn options.
-[no]neutral gmx_bool no This option will add enough ions to neutralize the system. In combination with the concentration option a neutral system at a given salt concentration will be generated.

Known problems


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