AMBER Archive (2008)

Subject: AMBER: Problem with box dimension in AmberTools ptraj

From: Steve Spronk (spronk_at_umich.edu)
Date: Tue Jul 22 2008 - 01:35:47 CDT


I was having trouble imaging with the latest version of ptraj found in the
AmberTools 1.0 package. I noticed that the archives have several other
instances in the past few months of problems with imaging, but it didn't
seem like there was any resolution to these problems.

 

In my investigations into the weirdness of the imaging, I came across what
might be the issue. It seems to me that if you read in an Amber coordinate
file with box information and write out a new one, the box dimensions are
altered upon output. As a test case of this, I have a 50-frame MD
trajectory written out by sander (the Amber 8 version-our most recent sander
installation). It's too large to attach, but the file
(traj_from_sander.mdcrd) and the prmtop file used to create it (prot.prmtop)
are available on line at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~spronk.

 

I ran ptraj with prot.prmtop and the following very simple script *twice*:

 

trajin traj_from_sander.mdcrd

trajout traj_from_ptraj8.mdcrd

#trajout traj_from_ptraj10.mdcrd

 

First I ran it "as is" with the version of ptraj that came with Amber 8,
which wrote out traj_from_ptraj8.mdcrd. Then I swapped the commenting on
the trajout lines (commenting out the ptraj8 line and uncommenting the
ptraj10 line) and re-ran using the version that we downloaded with
AmberTools 1.0 (associated with Amber 10), to create
traj_from_ptraj10.mdcrd.

 

All three of my trajectory files should be essentially identical, right?
But the diff results (below) show that while ptraj8 does reproduce the
sander trajectory exactly, the box vector line for each frame of the ptraj10
trajectory is different. ptraj 10 writes out a box size of 84.372 84.372
84.372 regardless of the actual box size of the particular frame. (I've
confirmed this with another trajectory that was run with pressure coupling,
in which the box size changed throughout the run. For this trajectory, too,
every box dimension was 84.372.) The 84.372 box dimensions happen to be the
exact dimension of the box as specified in the prmtop file.

 

I think that this is a bug: the box dimensions from the prmtop file should
not be used to overwrite the box information for the individual frames of
the input trajectory. The change in box vector would really screw up the
imaging. But this would happen only for cases in which the coordinate files
were created by ptraj, not sander, which may be why some people have had
problems and presumably most people haven't.

 

Am I doing something wrong? Can anyone else confirm this?

 

Here are the diff results:

 

$ diff traj_from_ptraj8.mdcrd traj_from_sander.mdcrd

1c1

< rdparm transformed trajectory

---

>

$ diff traj_from_ptraj10.mdcrd traj_from_sander.mdcrd

1c1

< trajectory generated by ptraj

---

>

12198c12198

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

24395c24395

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

36592c36592

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

48789c48789

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

60986c60986

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

73183c73183

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

85380c85380

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

97577c97577

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

109774c109774

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

121971c121971

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

134168c134168

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

146365c146365

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

158562c158562

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

170759c170759

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

182956c182956

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

195153c195153

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

207350c207350

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

219547c219547

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

231744c231744

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

243941c243941

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

256138c256138

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

268335c268335

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

280532c280532

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

292729c292729

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

304926c304926

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

317123c317123

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

329320c329320

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

341517c341517

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

353714c353714

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

365911c365911

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

378108c378108

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

390305c390305

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

402502c402502

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

414699c414699

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

426896c426896

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

439093c439093

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

451290c451290

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

463487c463487

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

475684c475684

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

487881c487881

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

500078c500078

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

512275c512275

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

524472c524472

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

536669c536669

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

548866c548866

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

561063c561063

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

573260c573260

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

585457c585457

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

597654c597654

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

609851c609851

< 84.372 84.372 84.372

---

> 80.960 80.960 80.960

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