Monica H. Lamm

Ab Initio Study of Molecular Interactions in Cellulose Iα

Biomass recalcitrance, the resistance of cellulosic biomass to degradation, is due in part to the stability of the hydrogen bond network and stacking forces between the polysaccharide chains in cellulose microfibers. The fragment molecular orbital (FMO) method at the correlated Møller-Plesset second order perturbation level of theory was used on a model of the crystalline cellulose Iα core with a total of 144 glucose units. These computations show that the intersheet chain interactions are stronger than the intrasheet chain interactions for the crystalline structure, while they are more similar to each other for a relaxed structure. An FMO chain pair interaction energy decomposition analysis for both the crystal and relaxed structures reveals an intricate interplay between electrostatic, dispersion, charge transfer, and exchange repulsion effects. The role of the primary alcohol groups in stabilizing the interchain hydrogen bond network in the inner sheet of the crystal and relaxed structures of cellulose Iα, where edge effects are absent, was analyzed. The maximum attractive intrasheet interaction is observed for the GT-TG residue pair with one intrasheet hydrogen bond, suggesting that the relative orientation of the residues is as important as the hydrogen bond network in strengthening the interaction between the residues.

Biomolecule-directed assembly of nanoscale building blocks studied via lattice Monte Carlo simulation

We perform lattice Monte Carlo simulations to study the self-assembly of functionalized inorganic nanoscale building blocks using recognitive biomolecule linkers. We develop a minimal coarse-grained lattice model for the nanoscale building block (NBB) and the recognitive linkers. Using this model, we explore the influence of the size ratio of linker length to NBB diameter on the assembly process and the structural properties of the resulting aggregates, including the spatial distribution of NBBs and aggregate topology. We find the constant-kernel Smoluchowski theory of diffusion-limited cluster-cluster aggregation describes the aggregation kinetics for certain size ratios.

Evaluation of coarse-grained mapping schemes for polysaccharide chains in cellulose

A fundamental understanding of the intermolecular forces that bind polysaccharide chains together in cellulose is crucial for designing efficient methods to overcome the recalcitrance of lignocellulosic biomass to hydrolysis. Because the characteristic time and length scales for the degradation of cellulose by enzymatic hydrolysis or chemical pretreatment span orders of magnitude, it is important to closely integrate the molecular models used at each scale so that, ultimately, one may switch seamlessly between quantum, atomistic, and coarse-grained descriptions of the system. As a step towards that goal, four multiscale coarse-grained models for polysaccharide chains in a cellulose-Iα microfiber are considered. Using the force matching method, effective coarse-grained forces are derived from all-atom trajectories. Performance of the coarse-grained models is evaluated by comparing the intrachain radial distribution functions with those obtained using the all-atom reference data. The all-atom simulation reveals a double peak in the radial distribution function for sites within each glucose residue that arises from the distinct conformations sampled by the primary alcohol group in the glucose residues. The three-site and four-site coarse-grained models have sufficient degrees of freedom to predict this double peak while the one-site and two-site models do not. This is the first time that coarse-grained models have been shown to reproduce such subtle, yet important, molecular features in a polysaccharide chain. The relative orientations between glucose residues along the polysaccharide chain are evaluated and it is found that the four-site coarse-grained model is best at reproducing the glucose-glucose conformations observed in the all-atom simulation. The success of the four-site coarse-grained model underscores the importance of decoupling the pyranose ring from the oxygen atom in the glycosidic bond when developing all-atom to coarse-grained mapping schemes for polysaccharides.