First-Principles Simulations of Biological Molecules Subjected to Ionizing Radiation.

Ionizing rays cause damage to genomes, proteins, and signaling pathways that normally regulate cell activity, with harmful consequences such as accelerated aging, tumors, and cancers but also with beneficial effects in the context of radiotherapies. While the great pace of research in the twentieth century led to the identification of the molecular mechanisms for chemical lesions on the building blocks of biomacromolecules, the last two decades have brought renewed questions, for example, regarding the formation of clustered damage or the rich chemistry involving the secondary electrons produced by radiolysis. Radiation chemistry is now meeting attosecond science, providing extraordinary opportunities to unravel the very first stages of biological matter radiolysis. This review provides an overview of the recent progress made in this direction, focusing mainly on the atto- to femto- to picosecond timescales. We review promising applications of time-dependent density functional theory in this context.

The physical stage of radiolysis of solvated DNA by high-energy-transfer particles: insights from new first principles simulations.

The primary processes that occur following direct irradiation of bio-macromolecules by ionizing radiation determine the multiscale responses that lead to biomolecular lesions. The so-called physical stage loosely describes processes of energy deposition and molecular ionization/excitation but remains largely elusive. We propose a new approach based on first principles density functional theory to simulate energy deposition in large and heterogeneous biomolecules by high-energy-transfer particles. Unlike traditional Monte Carlo approaches, our methodology does not rely on pre-parametrized sets of cross-sections, but captures excitation, ionization and low energy electron emission at the heart of complex biostructures. It furthermore gives access to valuable insights on ultrafast charge and hole dynamics on the femtosecond time scale. With this new tool, we reveal the mechanisms of ionization by swift ions in microscopic DNA models and solvated DNA comprising almost 750 atoms treated at the DFT level of description. We reveal a so-called ebb-and-flow ionization mechanism in which polarization of the irradiated moieties appears as a key feature. We also investigate where secondary electrons produced by irradiation localize on chemical moieties composing DNA. We compare irradiation of solvated DNA by light (H+, and He2+) vs. heavier (C6+) ions, highlighting the much higher probability of double ionization with the latter. Our methodology constitutes a stepping stone towards a greater understanding of the chemical stage and more generally towards the multiscale modelling of radiation damage in biology using first principles.

Molecular Simulations with in-deMon2k QM/MM, a Tutorial-Review.

deMon2k is a readily available program specialized in Density Functional Theory (DFT) simulations within the framework of Auxiliary DFT. This article is intended as a tutorial-review of the capabilities of the program for molecular simulations involving ground and excited electronic states. The program implements an additive QM/MM (quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics) module relying either on non-polarizable or polarizable force fields. QM/MM methodologies available in deMon2k include ground-state geometry optimizations, ground-state Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics simulations, Ehrenfest non-adiabatic molecular dynamics simulations, and attosecond electron dynamics. In addition several electric and magnetic properties can be computed with QM/MM. We review the framework implemented in the program, including the most recently implemented options (link atoms, implicit continuum for remote environments, metadynamics, etc.), together with six applicative examples. The applications involve (i) a reactivity study of a cyclic organic molecule in water; (ii) the establishment of free-energy profiles for nucleophilic-substitution reactions by the umbrella sampling method; (iii) the construction of two-dimensional free energy maps by metadynamics simulations; (iv) the simulation of UV-visible absorption spectra of a solvated chromophore molecule; (v) the simulation of a free energy profile for an electron transfer reaction within Marcus theory; and (vi) the simulation of fragmentation of a peptide after collision with a high-energy proton.