MEAD is a set of software objects for the purpose of modeling the electrostatics of molecules using a semi-macroscopic picture in which the solvent and the molecular interior have different dielectric constants, the boundary between the different dielectric regions is dependent on the detailed atomic structure of the molecule, and the electrostatic potential is determined by the Poisson-Boltzmann equation. This version of MEAD includes modeling of a membrane as a low dielectric slab, possibly with a water-filled channel through a protein in the membrane.
MEAD is written in C++, which is a significant departure from most molecular software, which is more commonly written in Fortran or (recently) C. My purpose in choosing C++ was to explore the object-oriented programming style that C++ facilitates and to make a software system that other people could borrow pieces from and make extensions to in a convenient way.
MEAD is free software. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any later version. For more details, see the README, INSTALLATION and COPYING files inside the distribution. If you use MEAD in a scientific publication, please cite the papers, Bashford92 and ISCOPE97.
The MEAD suite includes programs to calculate the pKa values of sidechains and proteins, and solvation energies of small molecules. We have been working on the inclusion of MEAD-style electrostatics in quantum chemical calculations, and some of these features are expected to be included in the forthcoming release of the ADF quantum chemistry software.
The use of the MEAD programs is documented in a README file which is part of the download; and a brief description of the MEAD suite's overall design is given in ISCOPE97. Some of the deeper physical and numerical issues are reviewed in Bashford04 and Baker06.
A related program is Paul Beroza's mcti (or xmcti), which uses a Monte Carlo method to calculated average protonations of sites given the intrinsic pKa of each site, and the matrix of site-site interactions. You can find it here.
The development of MEAD has been supported by the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities (ALSAC) and by the National Institutes of Health (GM045607 and GM086243).