Addressing the Embeddability Problem in Transition Rate Estimation

by Goolsby, C.; Losey, J.; Fakharzadeh, A.; Xu, Y. C.; Duker, M. C.; Sherman, M. G.; Matteson, D. S.; Moradi, M.

Markov State Models (MSM) and related techniques havegained significanttraction as a tool for analyzing and guiding molecular dynamics (MD)simulations due to their ability to extract structural, thermodynamic,and kinetic information on proteins using computationally feasibleMD simulations. The MSM analysis often relies on spectral decompositionof empirically generated transition matrices. This work discussesan alternative approach for extracting the thermodynamic and kineticinformation from the so-called rate/generator matrix rather than thetransition matrix. Although the rate matrix itself is built from theempirical transition matrix, it provides an alternative approach forestimating both thermodynamic and kinetic quantities, particularlyin diffusive processes. A fundamental issue with this approach isknown as the embeddability problem. The key contribution of this workis the introduction of a novel method to address the embeddabilityproblem as well as the collection and utilization of existing algorithmspreviously used in the literature. The algorithms are tested on datafrom a one-dimensional toy model to show the workings of these methodsand discuss the robustness of each method in dependence of lag timeand trajectory length.

Journal
Journal of Physical Chemistry A
Volume
127
Issue
27
Year
2023
Start Page
5745-5759
URL
https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpca.3c01367
ISBN/ISSN
1520-5215; 1089-5639
DOI
10.1021/acs.jpca.3c01367