Towards a quantum chemical software package utilizing transferable fragments as molecular building blocks

Computer programs have been developed or are under development for the IBM personal computer that enable their users to get information on atomic charges, electrostatic potentials, conformational and other properties of molecular systems containing H, C, N, O, F, Si, P, S, or Cl atoms. The zero-order wavefunction is constructed of strictly localized molecular orbitals with fixed atomic orbital coefficients. The wave function can be refined by optimizing these coefficients, i.e., considering inductive effects via a coupled set of 2 × 2 secular equations within the CNDO /2 approximation. Delocalization and exchange effects are accounted for by expanding the wavefunction on a basis of the aforementioned strictly localized orbitals, instead of conventional atomic orbitals, and solving the corresponding SCF equations. Our method has been applied to the study of large systems. We calculated the electrostatic field of the complex of β-trypsin and basic pancreatic trypsin inhibitor and it has been found that strong field regions more or less coincide with hydration sites. A further potential application of protein electrostatic fields is in NMR spectroscopy. We found a linear correlation between C^αH or backbone NH proton chemical shifts and the protein field at the site of the corresponding proton. At last, we propose a simple method to mimic the bulk around atomic clusters modeling crystalline and amorphous silicon. Based on this method we found a linear correlation between atomic net charges and bond angle distortions in silicon clusters with 35 atoms.