Basic CHARMM Scripting

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Latest revision as of 18:09, 15 January 2016


[edit] How to run CHARMM

While you can run CHARMM interactively, one usually tells the program what to do by means of a script. Under Unix (at least for non-parallel versions of the program), this means that in order to execute a (short) CHARMM calculation, one runs from the command line (Unix Shell prompt)

charmm_executable < charmm_input_script.inp 

exploiting input redirection available under all Unix shells. Since as we shall see shortly CHARMM output tends to be verbose, one normally also redirects the output to a file, thus ending up with

charmm_executable < charmm_script.inp > charmm_output.out 

Of course, instead of charmm_executable use the path to the CHARMM executablr you have installed on your computer and replace charmm_input_script.inp and charmm_output_file.out by the names of the actual script which you want to run and the file to which you want to save your output.

[edit] Data Structures

  • Residue Topology File (RTF) This file defines groups by including the atoms, the properties of the group, and bond and charge information. CHARMM has standard Residue Topology Files for nucleic acids, lipids, proteins and carbohydrates. An example of a simple RTF, which describes a single residue (TIP3P water) is given below.
  * Residue topology file for TIP3 water
  31 1

  MASS     4 HT     1.00800 H ! TIPS3P WATER HYDROGEN
  MASS    75 OT    15.99940 O ! TIPS3P WATER OXYGEN

  RESI TIP3         0.000 ! tip3p, generate using noangle nodihedral
  ATOM OH2  OT     -0.834
  ATOM H1   HT      0.417
  ATOM H2   HT      0.417
  BOND OH2 H1 OH2 H2 H1 H2    ! the last bond is needed for shake
  ANGLE H1 OH2 H2             ! required


As you can see, this file containes a title and immediately following it the rather crypting string "31 1". This is the version number of the topology file, which is tied to the CHARMM version it was released with. Next comes two MASS statements, each of which define an atom type. Atom numbers 4 and 75 are assigned to TIP3P hydrogen and oxygen, respectively. Next comes the actually definition of the residue, which should be fairly self-explanatory, and then the file ends with the END keyword.

  • Parameter File (PARA or PARM) This file determines the energy associated with the structure by defining bond, angle and torsion force constants and van der Waals parameters. CHARMM has standard parameter files for nucleic acids, lipids, proteins carbohydrates, and water. An example of a parameter file with all of the parameters needed to simulate a TIP3 water molecule as defined above is given here. Note that the atom naming convention in the parameter file matches that in the topology file. Failure to uphold the atom naming and numbering conventions will yield incorrect results, which is why topology and parameter files are released together and it is generally not a good idea to mix topologies and parameters (however, it is possible to append one set of topologies and parameters to another).
  * parameter file needed to simulate TIP3 water

  !atom type Kb          b0
  HT   HT      0.000     1.5139 ! ALLOW WAT
  OT   HT    450.000     0.9572 ! ALLOW   WAT
                  ! FROM TIPS3P GEO

  !atom types     Ktheta    Theta0   Kub     S0
  HT   OT   HT     55.000   104.5200 ! ALLOW WAT
                  ! TIP3P GEOMETRY, ADM JR.



  NONBONDED nbxmod  5 atom cdiel shift vatom vdistance vswitch -
    cutnb 14.0 ctofnb 12.0 ctonnb 10.0 eps 1.0 e14fac 1.0 wmin 1.5

  !atom  ignored    epsilon    Rmin/2 ignored   eps,1-4  Rmin/2,1
  OT     0.000000  -0.152100     1.768200 ! ALLOW   WAT
                !TIP3P OXYGEN PARAMETERS, adm jr., NBFIX obsolete
  HT     0.000000  -0.046000     0.224500 ! ALLOW WAT
                !TIP3P HYDROGEN PARAMETERS, adm jr., NBFIX obsolete


Note that there are no dihedral or improper dihedrals parameters necessary for TIP3 water as there are only 3 atoms in the residue. Some parameter files also contain CMAP parameters, which are 2-dimensional grid corrections for dihedral angles (see MacKerell, A.D., Jr,. Feig, M., Brooks, C.L., III, Extending the treatment of backbone energetics in protein force fields: limitations of gas-phase quantum mechanics in reproducing protein conformational distributions in molecular dynamics simulations, Journal of Computational Chemistry, 25: 1400-1415, 2004 for further details).

  • Coordinates (COOR) These are the standard Cartesian coordinates of the atoms in the system. These are typically read in or written out in PDB or CHARMM card (CRD -- the default file format used throughout CHARMM) file format. The card format keeps track of additional molecule information that can be useful for structure manipulation (i.e. residue name, segment name, segment id, resdiue id, etc.). Below is an example of a .crd file and the information in contains:
 title = * WATER
 title = *  DATE:     4/10/07      4:25:51      CREATED BY USER: USER
 title = *
 Number of atoms (NATOM)       = 6
 Atom number (ATOMNO)          = 1 (just an exmaple)
 Residue number (RESNO)        = 1
 Residue name (RESName)        = TIP3
 Atom type (TYPE)              = OH2
 Coordinate (X)                = -1.30910
 Coordinate (Y)                = -0.25601
 Coordinate (Z)                = -0.24045
 Segment ID (SEGID)            = W
 Residue ID (RESID)            = 1
 Atom weight (Weighting)       = 0.00000
 now what the CHARMM crd file containing that information looks like...
    1    1 TIP3 OH2   -1.30910  -0.25601  -0.24045 W    1      0.00000
    2    1 TIP3 H1    -1.85344   0.07163   0.52275 W    1      0.00000
    3    1 TIP3 H2    -1.70410   0.16529  -1.04499 W    1      0.00000
    4    2 TIP3 OH2    1.37293   0.05498   0.10603 W    2      0.00000
    5    2 TIP3 H1     1.65858  -0.85643   0.10318 W    2      0.00000
    6    2 TIP3 H2     0.40780  -0.02508  -0.02820 W    2      0.00000

  • Protein Structure File (PSF) The PSF holds lists of every bond, bond angle, torsion angle, and improper torsion angle as well as information needed to generate the hydrogen bonds and the non-bonded list. It is essential for the calculation of the energy of the system.
  • Internal Coordinates (IC) This data structure defines the internal coordinates for atoms and can be used for analysis. Internal coordinates represent the position of atoms relative to one another rather than relative to Cartesian axes. In many cases, it is not necessary to deal directly with the internal coordinate data structure, however it is possible to manipulate it within a CHARMM script.
  • Non-Bonded list (NBONds) This is a atoms which are not bound to each other. It is used in calculating the non=bonded energy terms and electrostatic properties. The non-bonded list does contain atoms that are in atom-to-atom contact and engaging in van der Waals interactions.
  • Constraints (CONS) Constraints fix atoms in exactly one position during the simulation. This information is stored internally in the IMOVe array.
  • Images Data Structures (IMAGe) This data structure is used to help create symmetrical structures and contains bond information. This is a general image support system that allows the simulation of almost any crystal and also finite point groups. There is also a facility to introduce bond linkages between the primary atoms and image atoms. This allows infinite polymers, such as DNA to be studied. For infinite systems, an asymmetric unit may be studied because rotations and reflections are allowed transformations.
  • Crystal Data Structures (CRYStal) The crystal module is an extension of the image facility within CHARMM that allows calculations on crystals to be performed. It is possible to build a crystal with any space group symmetry, to optimize its lattice parameters and molecular coordinates and to carry out analysis of the vibration spectrum of the entire crystal similar to normal mode analysis. All crystal commands are invoked by the keyword CRYStal.

[edit] Basic CHARMM script elements

[edit] Titles

First, let's do something really silly and start up charmm reading from an empty file; which can be easily accomplished by executing

charmm_executable < /dev/null

CHARMM prints a header telling you copyright info, version and some more stuff, followed by a warning

            Chemistry at HARvard Macromolecular Mechanics
              (CHARMM) - Developmental Version 35b3     August 15, 2008
  Copyright(c) 1984-2001  President and Fellows of Harvard College
                         All Rights Reserved
 Current operating system: Linux-2.6.18-128.7.1.el5(x86_64)@n138.lobos.[+ 15]
            Created on 12/ 2/ 9 at  2:23:40 by user: tim
       Maximum number of ATOMS:    360720, and RESidues:      120240
       Current HEAP size:        10240000, and STACK size:  10000000
 RDTITL> No title read.

     ***** LEVEL  1 WARNING FROM <RDTITL> *****
     ***** Title expected.

The job finishes by printing some status info. The interesting part is the warning from which we learn that CHARMM expected a "title". Indeed, each CHARMM script should start with a title, and if the main script tells CHARMM to read from another file, the program also expects to find a title at the beginning of that file.

A title should not be confused with comments. E.g., it can only occur at the beginning of a file (we'll explain the apparent exceptions when we encounter them). Title lines start with a star or asterisk (*); to indicate the end of the title give a line containing only a star. (A title can consist of up to 32 consecutive lines) Thus,

* This would be a short title

If you start CHARMM with a short file containing the above snippet (=title), you get the title echoed in uppercase letters


instead of the warning when using the empty file.

[edit] Comments

Having blabbered so much about titles, what are comments: A comment in a CHARMM script is everything following an exclamation mark (!_ i.e.,

! this is a comment on a line by itself

and this would be a line containing a CHARMM command, followed by a comment

ENERgy ! as you might expect, this command calculates an energy

[edit] Ending a CHARMM script

So far, CHARMM finished when it reached the end of the script file (as the line


in the output informs you. It's OK to end a CHARMM script in this manner, but the preferred way of stopping CHARMM is by issuing the


command. We, thus, can create a first, completely useless CHARMM script, looking like

* A CHARMM script doing nothing
! we really should be doing something, but in the meantime 
! all we know is

In addition to the title, the comment is echoed as well. Note that CHARMM now prints upon finishing


This indicates that the CHARMM script has finished successfully; an abnormal termination message will print if CHARMM exits with an error.

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