Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations have become one of the most important tools in understanding the behavior of bio-molecules on nanosecond to microsecond time scales. In this protocol, we provide a general approach and standard setup protocol for MD simulations by using the Gromacs MD suite. Keywords: Molecular dynamics simulations, Conformational studies, Gromacs, Structural studies, Protein dynamics[Background] While molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are increasingly getting popular in studying protein dynamics in silico, there is a strong need to correlate the results with experimental observations. It is necessary that the protein model and the chosen environment for the simulations should mimic the native environment as close as possible. In general, there are three key stages in molecular dynamics simulations: Setup, production run, and analysis of the trajectories. The setup includes the input structures, parameters, force-fields and topologies. However, the readymade setup and wrong parameters could adversely affect the outcome making a false assessment of the biological interpretation. In view of a manual setup as a better choice to setup simulations, we through this protocol, provide a general approach and standard setup protocol for MD simulations. Many online/offline tools are available to perform MD simulations. One amongst the open source tools is Gromacs (Abraham et al., 2015; Pronk et al., 2013; Van der Spoel et al.,2005), a robust and popular MD simulations suite available today which supports almost all the major force fields. In this protocol we also refer to simulations of membrane proteins previously performed in vacuum as a temporary alternative to simulations including the membrane.

Medicinal plants are the main natural pools for the primary health care system, ethno-medicine, as well as traditional Indian system of several medicines. Uttarakhand also known as ‘Herbal State’, is a rich source of medicinal plants and traditional medicinal knowledge. A great deal of information about medicinal plants of Uttarakhand is scattered in different forms. Although many medicinal plant databases are available, currently there is no cohesive manually curated database of medicinal plants widely distributed in Uttarakhand state. A comprehensive database has been developed, known as the Uttarakhand Medicinal Plants Database (UMPDB). UMPDB provides extensive information on botanical name, common name, taxonomy, genomic taxonomy id, habit, habitat, location in Uttarakhand, part use, medicinal use, genomic information (including number of nucleotides, proteins, ESTs), chemical information, and scientific literature. Annotated medicinal plants integrated in the current version of the database were collected from the existing books, databases, and available literature. The current version of UMPDB contains the 1127 records of medicinal plants which belong to 153 plant families distributed across 13 districts of Uttarakhand. The primary goal of developing this database is to provide traditional, genomic, and chemical descriptions of the medicinal plants exclusively found in various regions of Uttarakhand. We anticipate that embedded information in the database would help users to readily obtain desired information.

Investigation of conformational changes in a protein is a prerequisite to understand its biological function. To explore these conformational changes in proteins we developed a strategy with the combination of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy. The major goal of this work is to investigate how far computer simulations can meet the experiments.

Cucumis melo L. that belongs to Cucurbitaceae family ranks among one of the highest valued horticulture crops being cultivated across the globe. Besides its economical and medicinal importance, Cucumis melo L. is a valuable resource and model system for the evolutionary studies of cucurbit family. However, very limited numbers of molecular markers were reported for Cucumis melo L. so far that limits the pace of functional genomic research in melon and other similar horticulture crops. We developed the first whole genome based microsatellite DNA marker database of Cucumis melo L. and comprehensive web resource that aids in variety identification and physical mapping of Cucurbitaceae family. The Cucumis melo L. microsatellite database (CmMDb: http://65.181.125.102/cmmdb2/index.html) encompasses 39,072 SSR markers along with its motif repeat, motif length, motif sequence, marker ID, motif type and chromosomal locations. The database is featured with novel automated primer designing facility to meet the needs of wet lab researchers. CmMDb is a freely available web resource that facilitates the researchers to select the most appropriate markers for marker-assisted selection in melons and to improve breeding strategies.