Before revision: Coarse-grained models are simplified representations of systems in terms of fewer particles or sites with respect to more accurate reference descriptions, e. g., atomically-detailed. The definition of the effective interaction sites is commonly based on chemical intuition, and no systematic analysis is usually performed over the many different possible representations to assess the quality of this choice using quantitative metrics .
After revision: In the theoretical modelling of a physical system a crucial step consists in the identification of those degrees of freedom that enable a synthetic, yet informative representation of it. While in some cases this selection can be carried out on the basis of intuition and experience, a straightforward discrimination of the important features from the negligible ones is difficult for many complex systems, most notably heteropolymers and large biomolecules .