Sub-THz acoustic excitation of protein motion
Ultrasound is widely used as a noninvasive method in biomedical applications. Usually, continuum numerical methods are used to simulate ultrasound propagating through different tissue types. In contrast, ultrasound simulations using particle description are less common, as the implementation is challenging. In this talk, I will present a dissipative particle dynamics model for performing ultrasound simulations in liquid water. The results of our ultrasound simulations show that our particle-based approach is capable of reproducing the fluctuating hydrodynamics description of ultrasound in the continuum limit. Using the developed approach, we have studied the susceptibility of the protein’s internal dynamics to mechanical stress induced by acoustic pressure waves. By analyzing the dynamic fluctuations of the protein subunits, we have demonstrated that the protein is highly susceptible to acoustic waves with frequencies corresponding to those of the internal protein vibrations. The present studies pave the way for development and optimization of a virtual ultrasound machine for large-scale biomolecular simulations.