Chiral Phosphino‐ and (Phosphinooxy)‐Substituted N‐Heterocyclic Carbene Ligands and Their Application in Iridium‐Catalyzed Asymmetric Hydrogenation

Enantiomerically pure iridium complexes with phosphino‐ and (phosphinooxy)‐substituted N‐heterocyclic carbene (NHC) ligands were synthesized. Investigation of their electronic properties showed a similar trans influence of the phosphino (or phosphinooxy) and the NHC units. The complexes were tested in iridium‐catalyzed hydrogenation. While low conversions were observed with unfunctionalized olefins, the catalysts proved to be suitable for hydrogenation of the α,β‐unsaturated ester 20 , allylic alcohol 21 , and imine 22 . The enantioselectivities were, however, moderate.     

Concerning the Reaction of the Betain‐Like Compound O2CC(PPh3)2 with Tungsten‐Carbonyl Derivatives; Preparation and Crystal Structures of [(CO)5W{η1‐O2C2(PPh3)2}] and [(CO)4W{η2‐O2C2(PPh3)2}]

The carbodiphosphorane CO₂ adduct O₂CC(PPh₃)₂ ( 1a ) reacts with [(CO)₅W(THF)] and [(CO)₃W(NCEt)₃] to produce the complexes [(CO)₅W{η¹‐O₂CC(PPh₃)₂}] ( 2 ) and [(CO)₄W{η²‐O₂CC(PPh₃)₂}] ( 3 ), respectively. Whereas in 2 the betain‐like ligand is coordinated at the tungsten atom in a monodentate manner, in 3 it acts as a chelating ligand with formation of a WO₂C four‐membered ring. As a by‐product during the reaction with the acetonitrile adduct also some crystals of the hydrolysis product [HC(PPh₃)₂]₂[W₆O₁₉] · 3C₂H₄Cl₂ (4 · 3C₂H₄Cl₂) were isolated. All compounds could be characterized by X‐ray analyses and the usual spectroscopic methods.     

Cycloarsanes (AsCF3)n (n = 4, 5) – Precursors for the Highly Reactive Diarsene F3CAs=AsCF3

Tetrakis(trifluoromethyl) cyclotetraarsane (F₃CAs)₄ ( 2 ) was used to repeat the UV initiated [4+2]‐cycloaddition reaction of the diarsene F₃CAs=AsCF₃ ( 1 ) with cyclohexa‐1,3‐diene (CHD) and to isolate single crystals of the cycloadduct 4 for a X‐ray diffraction analysis. 4 crystallizes in the space group and contains the diarsene group in its E‐configuration. 2 was also applied for [2+2]‐cycloaddition reactions of 1 with tBuC≡P and MeC≡CNⁱPr₂, but in contrast to positive results with (F₃CP)₄ the products were too labile for isolation. However, 2 was successfully used at room temperature as precursor for coordinating 1 as π‐donor ligand to the Pd(PPh₃)₂ complex fragment yielding η²‐bis(trifluoromethyl)diarsene‐bis(triphenylphosphane)‐palladium(0) 5 , which was characterized by X‐ray diffraction of single crystals and by spectroscopic investigations (NMR, IR, MS). Attempts to prove the existence of the diarsene 1 , generated by different methods, by spectroscopic studies very probably failed due to its extreme reactivity, not allowing the necessary concentrations for detection. Quantum chemical calculations of the stability of 1 with respect to dimerization, the stability of the [2+2]‐cycloadduct with 1‐di(isopropyl)aminopropyne and the energy difference between 4 and the 2,3‐dimethyl‐1,3‐butadiene cycloadduct of 1 were performed to understand the considerable differences between 1 and the related diphosphene F₃CP=PCF₃.     

Advances in methods and algorithms in a modern quantum chemistry program package

Advances in theory and algorithms for electronic structure calculations must be incorporated into program packages to enable them to become routinely used by the broader chemical community. This work reviews advances made over the past five years or so that constitute the major improvements contained in a new release of the Q-Chem quantum chemistry package, together with illustrative timings and applications. Specific developments discussed include fast methods for density functional theory calculations, linear scaling evaluation of energies, NMR chemical shifts and electric properties, fast auxiliary basis function methods for correlated energies and gradients, equation-of-motion coupled cluster methods for ground and excited states, geminal wavefunctions, embedding methods and techniques for exploring potential energy surfaces.     

Slow electron velocity-map imaging photoelectron spectra of the methoxide anion

High resolution anion photodetachment spectra are presented for the methoxide anion and its fully deuterated counterpart. The spectra were obtained with slow electron velocity-map imaging. Improved electron affinities are determined for CH3O as 1.5690+/-0.0019 eV and for CD3O as 1.5546+/-0.0019 eV. The spectra resolve many features associated with spin-orbit and vibronic coupling that were not seen in previous photodetachment studies. Photoelectron angular distributions taken as a function of detachment wavelength for the ground vibronic state transitions are recorded and are consistent with the removal of a nonbonding, p-type electron localized on the oxygen atom. Several hot bands and sequence bands are observed for the first time, providing insight into the vibrational structure of the methoxide anion. The results are compared to recent calculations of the anion photoelectron spectra that incorporate bilinear coupling terms among the methoxy vibrational modes and are found to be in reasonable agreement.     

SLICK--scoring and energy functions for protein-carbohydrate interactions

Protein-carbohydrate interactions are increasingly being recognized as essential for many important biomolecular recognition processes. From these, numerous biomedical applications arise in areas as diverse as drug design, immunology, or drug transport. We introduce SLICK, a package containing a scoring and an energy function, which were specifically designed to predict binding modes and free energies of sugars and sugarlike compounds to proteins. SLICK accounts for van der Waals interactions, solvation effects, electrostatics, hydrogen bonds, and CH...pi interactions, the latter being a particular feature of most protein-carbohydrate interactions. Parameters for the empirical energy function were calibrated on a set of high-resolution crystal structures of protein-sugar complexes with known experimental binding free energies. We show that SLICK predicts the binding free energies of predicted complexes (through molecular docking) with high accuracy. SLICK is available as part of our molecular modeling package BALL (www.ball-project.org).     

S3O2--an unusual structure with pi*-pi* interaction

The structures and relative stabilities of 15 S3O2 isomers have been investigated by G3X(MP2), CCSD(T)/aug-cc-pVTZ and MRCI/CASSCF calculations. The global energy minimum is a three-membered sulfur ring with two adjacent sulfoxide groups in a trans conformation, i.e. a vic-disulfoxide of C2 symmetry. The SS bond lengths are 2.136 (2x) and 2.354 angstroms at the CCSD(T)/cc-pVTZ level of theory. There is a strong interaction between the pi* orbitals of the two S=O moieties both in the trans and in the almost degenerate cis conformer. The corresponding chain-like singlet and triplet isomers of connectivity OSSSO lie close in energy (ca. 67 kJ mol(-1)) while five-membered and branched four-membered rings are significantly less stable. The structure of S3O2 is in contrast to that of the isoelectronic analogue S5, which exists as a five-membered twisted heterocycle.     

Distributed memory parallel implementation of energies and gradients for second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory with the resolution-of-the-identity approximation

We present a parallel implementation of second-order M?ller-Plesset perturbation theory with the resolution-of-the-identity approximation (RI-MP2). The implementation is based on a recent improved sequential implementation of RI-MP2 within the Turbomole program package and employs the message passing interface (MPI) standard for communication between distributed memory nodes. The parallel implementation extends the applicability of canonical MP2 to considerably larger systems. Examples are presented for full geometry optimizations with up to 60 atoms and 3300 basis functions and MP2 energy calculations with more than 200 atoms and 7000 basis functions.     

Characterizing bitterness: identification of key structural features and development of a classification model

This work describes the first approach in the development of a comprehensive classification method for bitterness of small molecules. The data set comprises 649 bitter and 13 530 randomly selected molecules from the MDL Drug Data Repository (MDDR) which are analyzed by circular fingerprints (MOLPRINT 2D) and information-gain feature selection. The feature selection proposes substructural features which are statistically correlated to bitterness. Classification is performed on the selected features via a na?ve Bayes classifier. The substructural features upon which the classification is based are able to discriminate between bitter and random compounds, and thus we propose they are also functionally responsible for causing the bitter taste. Such substructures include various sugar moieties as well as highly branched carbon scaffolds. Cynaropicrine contains a number of the substructural features found to be statistically associated with bitterness and thus was correctly predicted to be bitter by our model. Alternatively, both promethazine and saccharin contain fewer of these substructural features, and thus the bitterness in these compounds was not identified. Two different classes of bitter compounds were identified, namely those which are larger and contain mainly oxygen and carbon and often sugar moieties, and those which are rather smaller and contain additional nitrogen and/or sulfur fragments. The classifier is able to predict 72.1% of the bitter compounds. Feature selection reduces the number of false-positives while also increasing the number of false negatives to 69.5% of bitter compounds correctly predicted. Overall, the method presented here presents both one of the largest databases of bitter compounds presently available as well as a relatively reliable classification method.     

Harvesting chemical information from the Internet using a distributed approach: ChemXtreme

The Internet is a comprehensive resource of chemical information which is at the same time largely unstructured. It provides a wealth of scientific information such as experimental data and requires a suitable automated data mining and analysis tool for its meaningful exploration. The Java based software presented here, ChemXtreme, is developed for harvesting chemical information from the Internet employing the Google API in combination with a distributed client/server text analysis architecture based on JavaRMI. It represents the first and until now the only toolkit for automated structured data retrieval from the Internet which is itself open source. ChemXtreme employs the "search the search engine" strategy, where the URLs returned from the search engine are analyzed further via textual pattern analysis. This process resembles the manual analysis of the hit list, where relevant data are captured and, by means of human intervention, are mined into a format suitable for further analysis. ChemXtreme on the other hand transforms chemical information automatically into a structured format suitable for storage in databases and further analysis and also provides links to the original information source. The query data retrieved from the search engine by the server is encoded, encrypted, and compressed and then sent to all the participating active clients in the network for parsing. Relevant information identified by the clients on the retrieved Web sites is sent back to the server, verified, and added to the database for data mining and further analysis. The distributed further analysis of URLs in a client/server architecture scales very favorably, thus producing only minimal overhead.