Study on the regioselectivity of the N-ethylation reaction of N-benzyl-4-oxo-1,4-dihydroquinoline-3-carboxamide.

4-Oxoquinolines are a class of organic substances of great importance in medicinal chemistry, due to their biological and synthetic versatility. N-1-Alkylated-4-oxoquinoline derivatives have been associated with different pharmacological activities such as antibacterial and antiviral. The presence of a carboxamide unit connected to carbon C-3 of the 4-oxoquinoline core has been associated with various biological activities. Experimentally, the N-ethylation reaction of N-benzyl-4-oxo-1,4-dihydroquinoline-3-carboxamide occurs at the nitrogen of the oxoquinoline group, in a regiosselective way. In this work, we employed DFT methods to investigate the regiosselective ethylation reaction of N-benzyl-4-oxo-1,4-dihydroquinoline-3-carboxamide, evaluating its acid/base behavior and possible reaction paths.

Including thermal disorder of hydrogen bonding to describe the vibrational circular dichroism spectrum of zwitterionic L-alanine in water.

The vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) spectrum of l-alanine amino acid in aqueous solution in ambient conditions has been studied. The emphasis has been placed on the inclusion of the thermal disorder of the solute-solvent hydrogen bonds that characterize the aqueous solution condition. A combined and sequential use of molecular mechanics and quantum mechanics was adopted. To calculate the average VCD spectrum, the DFT B3LYP/6-311++G(d,p) level of calculation was employed, over one-hundred configurations composed of the solute plus all water molecules making hydrogen bonds with the solute. Simplified considerations including only four explicit solvent molecules and the polarizable continuum model were also made for comparison. Considering the large number of vibration frequencies with only limited experimental results a direct comparison is presented, when possible, and in addition a statistical analysis of the calculated values was performed. The results are found to be in line with the experiment, leading to the conclusion that including thermal disorder may improve the agreement of the vibrational frequencies with experimental results, but the thermal effects may be of greater value in the calculations of the rotational strengths.

Insights into the interactions of CO2 with amines: a DFT benchmark study.

The interaction between CO2 and 1,2-diaminoethane was computed using pure and hybrid density functionals. The CAM-B3LYP and wB97X-D functionals using a triple-ζ basis set that includes diffuse and polarization functions are the best functionals for calculating the relative energies of the zwitterion intermediate compared to a coupled-cluster with a single, double and non-iterative triple excitation (CCSD(T)) approach extrapolated to a complete basis set limit. With the two functionals and the triple-ζ basis set, the zwitterion is 1.70 kcal mol(-1) less stable than the reactants, and close to 1.63 kcal mol(-1) computed using the CCSD(T) approach. The inclusion of vibrational and thermal corrections and of entropic effects increases the relative energy of the zwitterion to 14.7 kcal mol(-1). Bending of the CO2 geometry increases its acidity due to a 1.09 eV reduction in the LUMO energy. Calculation of the CO2 interaction energy with a set of amines revealed that the interaction energies show a high correlation with their basicities, with the stronger bases stabilizing the zwitterion. For the most basic amine computed (3,4,6,7,8,9-hexahydro-2H-pyrimido[1,2-a]pyrimidine), the Gibbs free energy of the zwitterion is 15.8 kcal mol(-1) lower than the reactants. Therefore, for this highly basic amine, the zwitterion may have a longer lifetime, in contrast to 2-aminoethanol (MEA), where it is only a transient species.

Understanding the molecular aspects of tetrahydrocannabinol and cannabidiol as antioxidants.

An antioxidant mechanism of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) were compared with a simplified model of α-tocopherol, butylhydroxytoluene and hydroxytoluene in order to understand the antioxidant nature of THC and CBD molecules using DFT. The following electronic properties were evaluated: frontier orbitals nature, ionization potential, O-H bond dissociation energy (BDEOH), stabilization energy, and spin density distribution. An important factor that shows an influence in the antioxidant property of THC is the electron abstraction at the phenol position. Our data indicate that the decrease of the HOMO values and the highest ionization potential values are related to phenol, ether, and alkyl moieties. On the other hand, BDEOH in molecules with the cyclohexenyl group at ortho position of phenol are formed from lower energies than the molecules with an ether group at the meta position. In the light of our results, the properties calculated here predict that THC has a sightly higher antioxidant potential than CBD.

Synergistic Interaction of Hyperbranched Polyglycerols and Cetyltrimethylammonium Bromide for Oil/Water Interfacial Tension Reduction: A Molecular Dynamics Study.

Applying surfactants to reduce the interfacial tension (IFT) on water/oil interfaces is a proven technique. The search for new surfactants and delivery strategies is an ongoing research area with applications in many fields such as drug delivery through nanoemulsions and enhanced oil recovery. Experimentally, the combination of hyperbranched polyglycerol (HPG) with cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) substantially reduced the observed IFT of oil/water interface, 0.9 mN/m, while HPG alone was 5.80 mN/m and CTAB alone IFT was 8.08 mN/m. Previous simulations in an aqueous solution showed that HPG is a surfactant carrier. Complementarily, in this work, we performed classical molecular dynamics simulations on combinations of CTAB and HPG with one aliphatic chain to investigate further the interaction of this pair in oil interfaces and propose the mechanism of IFT decrease. Basically, from our results, one can observe that the IFT reduction comes from a combination of effects that have not been observed for other dual systems: (i) Due to the CTAB-HPG strong interaction, a weakening of their specific and isolated interactions with the water and oil phases occurs. (ii) Aggregates enlarge the interfacial area, turning it into a less ordered interface. (iii) The spread of individual molecules charge profiles leads to the much lower interfacial tension observed with the CTAB+HPG systems.