 in this perspective , we summarize 
 recent efforts to include the 
 explicit treatment of induced electronic polarization in biomolecular 
 force fields . 
 methods used to treat polarizability , including the 
 induced dipole , fluctuating charge , and classical drude oscillator 
 models , are presented , including recent advances in force fields using 
 those methods . 
 this is followed by recent results obtained with the 
 drude model , including microsecond molecular dynamics ( md ) simulations 
 of multiple proteins in explicit solvent . 
 results show significant 
 variability of backbone and side - chain dipole moments as a function 
 of environment , including significant changes during individual simulations . 
 
 dipole moments of water in the vicinity of the proteins reveal small 
 but systematic changes , with the direction of the changes dependent 
 on the environment . 
 analyses of the full proteins show that the polarizable 
 drude model leads to larger values of the dielectric constant of the 
 protein interior , especially in the case of hydrophobic regions . 
 these 
 results indicate that the inclusion of explicit electronic polarizability 
 leads to significant differences in the physical forces affecting 
 the structure and dynamics of proteins , which can be investigated 
 in a computationally tractable fashion in the context of the drude 
 model . 
Supplementary Material