Acidities, from molecular orbital calculations

Information about the possible structures of molybdate and its pro-tonated forms in solution has been obtained from molecular orbital calculations (62). By considering bond orders obtained from a Mulli-ken population analysis and the agreement between experimental and theoretical UV spectra it was concluded that [Mo04]2 and [HMoOt I are tetrahedral and that the neutral acid is octahedral. For the latter a somewhat distorted octahedral structure based on the formula Mo02(OH)2(H20)2 was proposed (62). The alternative structure Mo03(H20)3 was not taken into account in the calculations. 

The relative acidities in the gas phase can be detennined from ab initio or molecular orbital calculations while differences in the free energies of hydration of the acids and the cations are obtained from FEP sunulations in which FIA and A are mutated into FIB and B A respectively. 

Radicaloid substitution has not been extensively studied in the thiophene series. Molecular orbital calculations indicate that substitution should occur in the a-position. This has been found to be the case in the Gomberg-Bachmann coupling of diazohydroxides with thiophenes which has been used for the preparation of 2-(o-nitro-phenyl) thiophene, 2-(p-toluyl) thiophene, " " and 2-(p-chloro-phenyl)thiophene. " Coupling in the /8-position has been used for the preparation of 1,3-dimethyl-4,5-benzisothionaphthene (148) from 2-amino-tt-(2,5-dimethyl-3-thienyl)cinnamic acid (149). A recent investigation describes the homolytic phenylation of 2- and 3-phenyl-... 

There is considerable literature precedent for this reaction. In particular, Fotsch and Chamberlin (10) have reported that open chain y,8, 8,e and 6, -epoxy ketones and esters undergo cyclization in the presence of acids to form the corresponding dioxacarbenium ions. In addition, molecular orbital calculations were conducted to determine the heats of formation of the intermediates IX and X. Data from these calculations are given in Table 2. These calculations suggest that 1,6-attack (X) is... 

The new treatment had its origins partly in ab initio molecular orbital calculations of substituent effects and partly in extensive studies of gas-phase proton transfer reactions from about 1980 (Section V.A). Various aspects of this work essentially drew attention to the importance of substituent polarizability. In 1986 Taft, Topsom and their colleagues252 developed a scale of directional substituent polarizability parameters , oa, by ab initio calculations of directional electrostatic polarization potentials at the 3-21G//3-31G level for a large set of CH3X molecules. The oa values were shown to be useful in the correlation analysis of gas-phase acidities of several series of substrates252, and such work has subsequently been extended by Taft and Topsom151. 

Molecular-orbital calculations indicate that the stereoselective epoxidation of the alkene 192 by peroxy acids arises from stereoelectronic control exerted by a CF3— C bond orientated anti to the alkene plane, in contrast to the previously proposed model for epoxidation of allylic fluoride in which the F—C bond and alkene bonds are in a syn arrangement305. 

Pyridinium, quinolinium, and isoquinolinium cations are the major species undergoing electrophile substitution reactions under acidic conditions [90AHC(47)1]. As expected from Table XXIII, the electrophilic reaction of pyridinium ion occurs at the 3-position, and an electrophile attacks at the 5- and 8-positions of quinolinium and isoquinolinium cations. Electrophile reactivity of 1 is rather low because of its electron accepting character. Molecular orbital calculations of its orientation did not give a consistent conclusion. Electron density and superdelocalizability (electrophile) predict that position 1 will be the most reactive towards an electrophile, while inspection of the localization energy (electrophile) predicts that electrophilic reaction takes place at position 4. 

This enzyme s role in humans is to assist the detoxification of propionate derived from the degradation of the amino acids methionine, threonine, valine, and isoleucine. Propionyl-CoA is carboxylated to (5 )-methylmalonyl-CoA, which is epimerized to the (i )-isomer. Coenzyme Bi2-dependent methylmalonyl-CoA mutase isomerizes the latter to succinyl-CoA (Fig. 2), which enters the Krebs cycle. Methylmalonyl-CoA mutase was the first coenzyme B -dependent enzyme to be characterized crystallographically (by Philip Evans and Peter Leadlay). A mechanism for the catalytic reaction based on ab initio molecular orbital calculations invoked a partial protonation of the oxygen atom of the substrate thioester carbonyl group that facilitated formation of an oxycyclopropyl intermediate, which connects the substrate-derived and product-related radicals (14). The partial protonation was supposed to be provided by the hydrogen bonding of this carbonyl to His 244, which was inferred from the crystal structure of the protein. The ability of the substrate and product radicals to interconvert even in the absence of the enzyme was demonstrated by model studies (15). 

A quantitative scale of reactivity for aromatic substrates (fused, heterocyclic, and substituted rings) has been devised, based on the hard-soft acid-base concept (p. 375). From molecular-orbital theory, a quantity called activation hardness can be calculated for each position of an aromatic ring. The smaller the activation hardness, the faster the attachment at that position hence the treatment predicts the most likely orientations for incoming groups. 

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