Spin-orbit couplings within spin-conserving and spin-flipping time-dependent density functional theory: Implementation and benchmark calculations.

We present a new implementation for computing spin-orbit couplings (SOCs) within a time-dependent density-functional theory (TD-DFT) framework in the standard spin-conserving formulation as well in the spin-flip variant (SF-TD-DFT). This approach employs the Breit-Pauli Hamiltonian and Wigner-Eckart's theorem applied to the reduced one-particle transition density matrices, together with the spin-orbit mean-field treatment of the two-electron contributions. We use a state-interaction procedure and compute the SOC matrix elements using zero-order non-relativistic states.

Magnetic exchange interactions in binuclear and tetranuclear iron(III) complexes described by spin-flip DFT and Heisenberg effective Hamiltonians.

Low-energy spectra of single-molecule magnets (SMMs) are often described by Heisenberg Hamiltonians. Within this formalism, exchange interactions between magnetic centers determine the ground-state multiplicity and energy separation between the ground and excited states. In this contribution, we extract exchange coupling constants (J) for a set of iron (III) binuclear and tetranuclear complexes from all-electron calculations using non-collinear spin-flip time-dependent density functional theory (NC-SF-TDDFT).

Ligand-induced conformational preorganization of loops of c-MYC G-quadruplex DNA and its implications in structure-specific drug design.

Stabilization of a G-quadruplex (G4) DNA structure in the proto-oncogene c-MYC using small molecule ligands has emerged as an attractive strategy for the development of anticancer therapeutics. To understand the subtle structural changes in the G4 structure upon ligand binding, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of c-MYC G4 DNA were carried out in a complex with six different potent ligands: 3AQN, 6AQN, 3APN, 360A, Nap-Et, and Nap-Pr. The results show that the ligands 3AQN, 6AQN, 3APN, and 360A stabilize the G4 structure by making stacking interactions with the top quartet.