I was wondering, however, whether the authors had considered modeling the
system with an implicit solvation model. They point out that their
calculations of theoretical descriptors are single molecule calculations.
The environment in which the molecules are biologically active, however, is
clearly not the gas phase, but presumably is more like an aqueous
environment (or perhaps within a membrane surrounded by an aqueous
environment). There are now at least two very good implicit solvation
models implemented with the AM1 semiempirical method. COSMO by Klamt in
MOPAC, and SM2 by Cramer and Truhlar in AMSOL. Both of these reproduce
specific solvation interactions with water very well, including local
geometry changes due to stabilization of a local dipole. COSMO and SM4 also
allow for the simulation of solvents other than water, although for this
work I would presume water is the most appropriate environment to consider.
At any rate, it would be interesting to see whether using the orbital
energies and/or the dipole moment (which I would expect to be strongly
stabilized by solvation) calculated using an implicit solvation model would
correlate better with the observed activity.
Some quick calculations (ie. just reoptimizing the geometries from the
structures as given in the .pdb molecule files in paper 51) suggest
significantly different theoretical descriptors with solvation. Modeling
ions 1 and 2 (piperydinium and pyrrolidinium) in an aqueous environment
(with the COSMO model) predicts greater dipole moments by about 2 Debye
(15.65 and 17.24 as aqueous vs. 13.73 and 15.06 as single ions), and the
HOMO and LUMO energies are shifted (consistently about 3.2 eV higher for an
aqueous environment).
It may be that everything gets shifted evenly to make no difference in the
final regression, but it should be more realistic to include solvation in
the calculation.
EC
--- Ernest Chamot Consultant in Computational Chemistry Applications Chamot Laboratories, Inc. 530 E. Hillside Rd. Naperville, Illinois 60540 (708) 637-1559 (Voice & Fax) echamot@xnet.com http://www.xnet.com/~chamotlb ----- ECHET96. Conference home page: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/ectoc/echet96/ using Netscape, Mosaic, etc. E-mail discussions: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/echet96/ To unsubscribe from this list, send the message UNSUBSCRIBE ECHET96 to listserver@ic.ac.uk