  In this perspective, we discuss where and how accounting for electronic
many-body polarization affects the accuracy of classical molecular dynamics
simulations of biomolecules.While the effects of electronic polarization are
highly pronounced for molecules with an opposite total charge, they are also
non-negligible for interactions with overall neutral molecules. For instance,
neglecting these effects in important biomolecules like amino acids and
phospholipids affects the structure of proteins and membranes having a large
impact on interpreting experimental data as well as building coarse grained
models. With the combined advances in theory, algorithms and computational
power it is currently realistic to perform simulations with explicit
polarizable dipoles on systems with relevant sizes and complexity.
Alternatively, the effects of electronic polarization can also be included at
zero additional computational cost compared to standard fixed-charge force
fields using the electronic continuum correction, as was recently demonstrated
for several classes of biomolecules.
