Redox-Active Chiroptical Switching in Mono- and Bis-Iron Ethynylcarbo[6]helicenes Studied by Electronic and Vibrational Circular Dichroism and Resonance Raman Optical Activity.

Introducing one or two alkynyl-iron moieties onto a carbo[6]helicene results in organometallic helicenes (2 a,b) that display strong chiroptical activity combined with efficient redox-triggered switching. The neutral and oxidized forms have been studied in detail by electronic and vibrational circular dichroism, as well as by Raman optical activity (ROA) spectroscopy. The experimental results were analyzed and spectra were assigned with the help of first-principles calculations. In particular, a recently developed method for ROA calculations under resonance conditions has been used to study the intricate resonance effects on the ROA spectrum of mono-iron ethynylhelicene 2 a.

Stabilization of activated fragments by shell-wise construction of an embedding environment.

An activated fragment which is structurally unstable when considered isolated can be stabilized through binding to a suitable molecular environment; for instance, to a transition-metal fragment. The metal fragment may be designed in a shell-wise build-up of a surrounding molecular environment. However, adding more and more atoms in a consecutive fashion soon leads to a combinatorial explosion of structures, which is unfeasible to handle without automation. Here, we present a fully automated and parallelized framework that constructs such an embedding environment atom-wise. Molecular realizations of such an environment are constructed based on simple heuristic rules intended to screen a sufficiently large portion of the possible compound space and are then subsequently optimized by electronic structure methods. (Constrained-optimized) structures are then evaluated with respect to a scoring function, for which we choose here the concept of gradient-driven molecule construction. This concept searches for structure modifications that reduce the forces on all atoms. We develop and analyze our approach at the example of CO2 activation by reproducing a known compound and mapping out possible alternative structures and their effect on the stabilization of a (bent) CO2 ligand. For all generated structures, the nuclear gradient on the activated fragment and its coordination energy are evaluated to steer the design process. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Calculated Resonance Vibrational Raman Optical Activity Spectra of Naproxen and Ibuprofen.

Determining the absolute configuration of a molecule is possible by means of various chiroptical spectroscopic methods, one of them being vibrational Raman optical activity (VROA). By adopting a laser excitation wavelength in resonance with an electronic transition, the weak spectral signals can be selectively enhanced. We implement a Kohn-Sham methodology for the calculation of resonance and off-resonance VROA spectra to (S)-naproxen and (S)-ibuprofen and discuss their band patterns. The resonance enhancement of the VROA spectrum of (S)-naproxen at an incident wavelength of 514.5 nm caused by an absorption tail as well as the typical off-resonance behavior of the VROA spectrum of (S)-ibuprofen at the same incident wavelength can be well reproduced. VROA spectra are also predicted under full resonance conditions.

A molecular mechanism for the enzymatic methylation of nitrogen atoms within peptide bonds.

The peptide bond, the defining feature of proteins, governs peptide chemistry by abolishing nucleophilicity of the nitrogen. This and the planarity of the peptide bond arise from the delocalization of the lone pair of electrons on the nitrogen atom into the adjacent carbonyl. While chemical methylation of an amide bond uses a strong base to generate the imidate, OphA, the precursor protein of the fungal peptide macrocycle omphalotin A, self-hypermethylates amides at pH 7 using S-adenosyl methionine (SAM) as cofactor. The structure of OphA reveals a complex catenane-like arrangement in which the peptide substrate is clamped with its amide nitrogen aligned for nucleophilic attack on the methyl group of SAM. Biochemical data and computational modeling suggest a base-catalyzed reaction with the protein stabilizing the reaction intermediate. Backbone N-methylation of peptides enhances their protease resistance and membrane permeability, a property that holds promise for applications to medicinal chemistry.