I am pleased to announce the release of AmberFFC, a program to convert all the AMBER Force Fields available in the public domain (amber91, amber91X, amber94, amber96, amber98 and amber99) for use with commercial molecular modeling packages. In its current version (version 1.0, written May 2000, released October 2000) AmberFFC creates the AMBER force fields for the CDiscover molecular mechanics module of Molecular Simulation Inc. by transforming the AMBER amino acid and nucleic acid topology database and force field parameter files to the MSI file format.

This program is suitable for any modeler who is interested in (i) using the current AMBER force fields with MSI molecular modeling package and/or (ii) comparing the results obtained with the AMBER and MSI software. It has been entirely written with the Perl programming language, making it highly flexible and portable on different operating systems and platforms. Easy to use, AmberFFC is freely available for academic laboratories through the world-wide web at the site http://www.u-picardie.fr/UPIC/UPJV/recherche/labos/bpd/AmberFFC.htm after signing a license.

The first version of this program was written in May 2000 by :
A. Dejoux and F.-Y. Dupradeau - Faculte de Pharmacie, Amiens, France
P. Cieplak - Dept. Chem., University of Warsaw, Poland
G. Moyna - Dept. Chem. & Biochem., University of Sciences in Philadelphia, USA.