Flexibility of "polyunsaturated fatty acid chains" and peptide backbones: A comparative ab initio study.

The conformational properties of omega-3 type of polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) chains and their fragments were studied using Hartree-Fock (RHF/3-21G) and DFT (B3LYP/6-31G(d)) methods. Comparisons between a unit (U) fragment of the PUFA chain and a mono N-Ac-glycine-NHMe residue show that both structures have the same sequence of sp2-sp3-sp2 atoms. The flexibility of PUFA originates in the internal rotation about the above pairs of sigma bonds.

Folded and unfolded conformations of the omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid family: ch(3)ch(2)[ch=chch(2)](b)[ch(2)](m)cooh: first principles study.

Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) like stearidonic acid (SDA;18:4 n-3) eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA; 20:5 n-3), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA; 22:6 n-3) and its chain fragment models were studied at B3LYP/6-31G(d) levels of theory. Significant conformations for the cis and trans isomers were selected to obtained the thermodynamic functions (DeltaH, DeltaS, DeltaG) for the cis-trans isomerization and for folding using the B3LYP/6-311+G(2d,p)//B3LYP/6-31G(d) level of theory. The structural analysis shows that there are significant differences in thermodynamic function of the trans- and cis-PUFAs.