Bugs item #3372106, was opened at 2011-07-20 10:35
Message generated for change (Tracker Item Submitted) made by gustafdo
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Category: Open Babel
Group: v 1.0.3
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Private: No
Submitted By: Gustaf Olsson (gustafdo)
Assigned to: Geoff Hutchison (ghutchis)
Summary: Error during optimization with gaff

Initial Comment:
Sorry if this turns up two times, I could not find my submission after the last 
time and I also forgot my name and email address.

My name is Gustaf Olsson ([email protected]) 

I am running Avogadro v.1.0.3 on Mac OS X 10.6.8

First of all, thank you for providing this excellent pice of freeware! One of 
the best molecular visualizing, building and analyzing packages I have tried so 
for.

Though I have encountered a problem/bug that I cannot seem to sort out. It 
seems that GAFF has become a \"reactive\" forcefield in the latest version and 
I\'m pretty sure that it is not supposed to be!

This is what I\'m doing:

        File -> Import -> Fetch chemical structure…
                -> methacrylic acid (figure1, attached file)

(Though it does not matter if I draw the molecule myself, the same error occurs)

        -> Auto Optimization Tool (Energy minimization)

I then continue to run an energy minimization using the GAFF forcefield (since 
I\'m running AMBER for MD simulations using GAFF) with 4 steps per update and 
running either \'Steepest Descent\' or \'Conjugate Gradients\' (does not matter 
which method). 

This is where the problem occurs, the oxygen atoms of the carboxyl group 
suddenly attract each other and the carbonyl oxygen atom of the group swallows 
the acidic proton, forms a new bond to the \"hydroxyl\" oxygen and the 
minimization stops (figure2, attached file). This should not happen, from my 
experience with GAFF it should even be impossible for the FF to actually 
represent bond formation.

If I delete the \"hydroxyl\" oxygen atom (indicated in figure2, attached) the 
acidic hydrogen reemerges and the energy minimization continues with the 
incorrect structure (figure3, attached). It does not matter if I elongate the 
carbon chains, the carboxylic acid group continues to display this behavior. 

Interestingly, when importing benzoic acid instead of a hydrocarbon chain acid, 
the problem disappears. When performing the minimization/optimization for this 
structure the acid functionality behaves the way one would expect (figure4, 
attached).

I found the gaff.dat file and tried replacing it with the newer GAFF (2010) 
file from my amber distribution and removing the headings (MASS, ANGLE and so 
on…) but this gave the same result as with the previous GAFF version so I guess 
this is somehow related to the Avogardo distribution itself. I cannot remember 
that I had this problem with previous version of the software, though I cannot 
find the DMG for v. 1.0.2 so I cannot confirm this. I should add that the 
problem does not occur with any of the other available forcefields either.

Any help/solutions/input on this matter would be greatly appreciated!

 

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