Theoretical 13C chemical shift, 14N, and 2H quadrupole coupling- constant studies of hydrogen bonding in L-alanylglycine dipeptide

(13)C chemical shieldings and (14)N and (2)H electric field gradient (EFG) tensors of L-alanylglycine (L-alagly) dipeptide were calculated at RHF/6-31 + + G** and B3LYP/6-31 + + G** levels of theory respectively. For these calculations a crystal structure of this dipeptide obtained from X-ray crystallography was used. Atomic coordinates of different clusters containing several L-alagly molecules were used as input files for calculations. These clusters consist of central and surrounding L-alagly molecules, the latter forming short, strong, hydrogen bonds with the central molecule. Since the calculations did not converge for these clusters, the surrounding L-alagly molecules were replaced by glycine molecules. In order to improve the accuracy of calculated chemical shifts and nuclear quadrupole coupling constants (NQCCs), different geometry-optimization strategies were applied for hydrogen nuclei. Agreement between calculated and experimental data confirms that our optimized coordinates for hydrogen nuclei are more accurate than those obtained by X-ray diffraction.