Assignment of a Physical Energy Scale for the Dimensionless Interaction Energies within the PRIME20 Peptide Model

We present a calibration scheme to determine the conversion factors from a coarse-grained stochastic approximation Monte Carlo approach using the PRIME20 peptide interaction model to atomistic force-field interaction energies at full explicit aqueous solvation. The conversion from coarse-grained to atomistic structures was performed according to our previously established inverse coarse-graining protocol. We provide a physical energy scale for both the backbone hydrogen bonding interactions and the sidechain interactions by correlating the dimensionless energy descriptors of the PRIME20 model with the energies averaged over molecular dynamics simulations. The conversion factor for these interactions turns out to be around 2 kJ/mol for the backbone interactions, and zero for the sidechain interactions. We discuss these surprisingly small values in terms of their molecular interpretation.