A novel dihydrocoumarin under experimental and theoretical characterization.

Coumarins are natural and synthetic active ingredients widely applied in diverse types of medicinal treatments, such as cancer, inflammation, infection, and enzyme inhibition (monoamine oxidase B). Dihydrocoumarin compounds are of great interest in organic chemistry due to their structural versatilities and, as part of our investigations concerning the structural characterization of small molecules, this work focuses on crystal structure and spectroscopic characterization of the synthesized and crystallized compound 4-(4-methoxyphenyl)-3,4-dihydro-chromen-2-one (C16H14O3). Additionally, a theoretical calculation was performed using density functional theory to analyze the sites where nucleophilic or electrophilic attack took place and to examine the molecular electrostatic potential surface. Throughout all of these calculations, both density functional theory and Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics were performed by fully optimized geometry. The spectroscopic analysis indicated the presence of aromatic carbons and hydrogen atoms, and also the carbonyl and methoxy groups that were confirmed by the crystallographic structure. The C16H14O3 compound has a non-classical intermolecular interaction of type C-H⋅⋅⋅O that drives the molecular arrangement and the crystal packing. Moreover, the main absorbent groups were characterized throughout calculated harmonic vibrational frequencies. Also, natural bond orbital analysis successfully locates the molecular orbital with π-bonding symmetry and the molecular orbital with π* antibonding symmetry. Finally, the gap between highest occupied and lowest unoccupied molecular orbitals implies in a high kinetic stability and low chemical reactivity of title molecule.

Theoretical investigation of the interaction of glycerol with aluminum and magnesium phthalocyanines.

Glycerol is a byproduct produced in great quantity by biodiesel industries in transesterification reactions. Finding new applications for glycerol is a current concern of many research groups around the world. This work focuses on a theoretical investigation, at the B3LYP/6-31G* level of theory, into the possibility of using aluminum phthalocyanine (AlPc) and magnesium phthalocyanine (MgPc) in the modelling of catalysts to convert glycerol into alcohol, which has wider industrial applicability. According to our calculations there are strong interactions between the O-terminus of glycerol and the central metal atom of AlPc and MgPc. By applying the Fukui function, HSAB theory and analysis of the frontier molecular orbital, it was possible to explain the way in which glycerol interacts with AlPc and MgPc. As a result of these interactions, there is a considerable change in both electronic and geometric parameters of glycerol, which can be used in designing new strategies to convert glycerol into alcohol.

A quantum chemical and chemometrical study of indolo[2,1-b]quinazoline and their analogues with cytotoxic activity against breast cancer cells.

Some indolo[2,1-b]quinalozine (tryptanthrin) analogues present cytotoxic activity against human breast cancer cells. In this work, chemometric methods were applied in the search for building discriminant models between active and inactive analogues, based on the correlations among their in vitro cytotoxic activities and their electronic and geometric molecular descriptors. From 88 descriptors calculated with density functional theory with the exchange correlation functional B3LYP and the basis set 6-31G* (Gaussian 03), 29 were pre-selected based on their Fisher weights, and finally five descriptors (partial charge on atom 15, bond orders between atoms 12-13, 17-25 and 18-26, and energy difference between frontier molecular orbitals) were selected for principal component analysis. This analysis was able to discriminate 12 inactive from 22 active analogues by using only one principal component, accounting for 49% of the total variance and allowing us to better understand the influence of these electronic descriptors in the cytotoxic activity. In addition, a supervised partial least-squares discriminant model was build and successfully used to discriminate tryptanthrin analogues. The model was validated through an independent test set and considered robust to overfitting.