Synthesis, theoretical studies, and effect on the photosynthetic electron transport of trifluoromethyl arylamides.

Background: The photosynthetic apparatus is targeted by various herbicides, including several amides such as diuron and linuron. Considering the need for the discovery of new active ingredients to cope with weed resistance, the synthesis of a series of trifluoromethyl aryl amides is herein described whose inhibitory properties were assessed in vitro on the photosynthetic electron transport chain, and in vivo on the growth of a model cyanobacterial strain. Theoretical studies were also carried out.

Simple quantitative structure-property relationship (QSPR) modeling of 17O carbonyl chemical shifts in substituted benzaldehydes compared to DFT and empirical approaches.

The geometry of 50 substituted benzaldehydes was optimized at the semiempirical PM3 level, and various electronic and steric descriptors accounting for properties of the benzene ring, aldehyde group, and their connecting carbon-carbon bond were calculated. Quantitative structure-property relationships (QSPR) between (17)O carbonyl chemical shifts and these descriptors were established using partial least-squares regression and principal component regression. These two parsimonious QSPR models were comparable with the literature empirical model and DFT (density functional theory) and capable of predicting (17)O chemical shifts for 10 benzaldehydes.

Theoretical study of radical and neutral intermediates of artemisinin decomposition.

Four artemisinin reductive decomposition routes A, B1, B2, and B3 with 13 species (QHS, 1/2, 3, 4, 5, 5a, 6, 7, 18, 18a, 19, 20, and 21) were studied at the B3LYP/6-31G** level. Structures of the species were analyzed in terms of geometrical parameters, Löwdin bond orders, partial atomic charges and spin densities, electronic and free energies, and entropy. Searches in the Cambridge Structural Database for high-level quality artemisinin-related structures were also performed.

Conformational study of (8alpha,8'beta)-bis(substituted phenyl)-lignano-9,9'-lactones by means of combined computational, database mining, NMR, and chemometric approaches.

Beta-(3,4-Methylenedioxybenzyl)-gamma-butyrolactone (MDBL) and (-)-hinokinin (HK) were obtained by partial synthesis and characterized by 1H NMR and computational methods (conformational analysis, molecular modeling, structural data mining and chemometrics). Three conformers were detected for MDBL and nine were found for HK. The energy differences are around 1 and 2 kcal mol(-1) and rotation barriers are less than 3 and 5 kcal mol(-1) for MDBL and HK conformers, respectively.

Molecular graphics approach to bacterial AcrB protein-beta-lactam antibiotic molecular recognition in drug efflux mechanism.

AcrAB-TolC is the most important multidrug efflux pump system of Gram-negative bacteria, responsible for their resistance to lipophilic and amphiphilic drugs. In this work, a molecular graphics study of the pump components AcrB and TolC, 16 beta-lactam antibiotics and 7 other substrates, as well as of AcrB-substrate complexes, was performed in order to give a mechanistic proposal for the efflux process at molecular level. AcrAB-TolC is a proton-dependent electromechanical device which opens to extrude drugs from the bacterial periplasm and perhaps cytoplasm, by means of a series of structural changes within the complex and its components AcrA, AcrB and TolC.

A priori molecular descriptors in QSAR: a case of HIV-1 protease inhibitors. II. Molecular graphics and modeling.

Molecular graphics and modeling methods illustrated the chemical background of the a priori approach from part I, and visualized steric and electronic enzyme-inhibitor relationships at qualitative and quantitative level for 34 and its derivatives. The enzyme-inhibitor electron density overlap occurs at 1.5-5.

A priori molecular descriptors in QSAR: a case of HIV-1 protease inhibitors. I. The chemometric approach.

A quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) study on 48 peptidic HIV-1 protease inhibitors was performed. Fourteen a priori molecular descriptors were used to build QSAR models. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares (PLS) regression were employed.