Water is the solvent for virtually all biological processes. Every element of a living cell, from the proteins to nucleic acids to membranes or small molecules, is surrounded and solvated by water. For any two biomolecules to interact intimately (like a drug binding to a protein) the water molecules surrounding them must be displaced. Understanding the nature of these waters is crucial to a detailed model of protein-drug or protein-nucleic acid interactions. We are using a microscopic simulation technology (molecular dynamics) to generate data describing the average properties of water molecules hydrating a solute. The Computer Graphics Lab's visualization hardware and software is crucial to displaying the results of our simulations and permits a real, three- dimensional model of the average properties of the water surrounding a molecule in solution to be generated. This project is complete, and our paper is in press in the Journal of Molecular Graphics.
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