We demonstrate how statistical free energy perturbation calculations used in drug discovery can be extended to safer chemical design.

Carboxyphosphate, a suspected intermediate in ATP-dependent carboxylases, has not been isolated nor observed directly by experiment. Consequently, little is known concerning its structure, stability, and ionization state. Recently, carboxyphosphate as either a monoanion or dianion has been shown computationally to adopt a novel pseudochair conformation featuring an intramolecular charge-assisted hydrogen bond (CAHB). In this work, additive and subtractive correction schemes to the commonly employed open–closed method are used to estimate the strength of the CAHB. Truhlar’s Minnesota M06-2X functional with Dunning’s aug-cc-pVTZ basis set has been used for geometry optimization, energy evaluation, and frequency analysis. The CHARMM force field has been used to approximate the Pauli repulsive terms in the closed and open forms of carboxyphosphate. From our additive correction scheme, differential Pauli repulsion contributions between the pseudochair (closed) and open conformations of carboxyphosphate are found to be significant in determining the CAHB strength. The additive correction modifies the CAHB prediction (ΔEclosed–open) of −14 kcal/mol for the monoanion and −12 kcal/mol for the dianion to −22.9 and −18.4 kcal/mol, respectively. Results from the subtractive technique reinforce those from our additive procedure, where the predicted CAHB strength ranges from −17.8 to −25.4 kcal/mol for the monoanion and from −15.7 to −20.9 kcal/mol for the dianion. Ultimately, we find that the CAHB in carboxyphosphate meets the criteria for short-strong hydrogen bonds. However, carboxyphosphate has a unique energy profile that does not result in the symmetric double-well behavior of low-barrier hydrogen bonds. These findings provide deeper insight into the pseudochair conformation of carboxyphosphate, and lead to an improved mechanistic understanding of this intermediate in ATP-dependent carboxylases.

Chemicals are the basis of our society and economy, yet many existing chemicals are known to have unintended adverse effects on human and environmental health. Testing all existing and new chemicals on animals is both economically and ethically unfeasible. In this paper, a new in silico framework is presented that affords redesign of existing hazardous chemicals in commerce based on specific molecular initiating events in their adverse outcomes pathways. Our approach is based on a successful methodology implemented in computational drug discovery, and promises to dramatically lower costs associated with new chemical development by synergistically addressing chemical function and safety at the design stage. <br>