Schiff bases are widely used molecules due to their potential
biological
activity. In this manuscript, we presented the synthesis and NMR study
of new enamine Schiff bases derived from
l
-tryptophan, showing
that the Z-form of the enamine is the main tautomeric form for aliphatic
precursors. The DFT-B3LYP methodology at the 6-311+G**(d,p) level
suggested that the tautomeric imine forms are less stable than the
corresponding enamine forms. Their isomerism depends on the formation
of intramolecular hydrogen bonds and steric factors associated with
the starting carbonyl precursors. The
in vitro
biological
activity tests against
Fusarium oxysporum
revealed that acetylacetone derivatives are the most active agents
(IC
50
< 0.9 mM); however, the antifungal activity could
be disfavored by bulky groups on ester and enamine moieties. Finally,
the structure-based virtual screening through molecular docking and
MM-GBSA rescoring revealed that Schiff bases
3e
,
3g
, and
3j
behave putatively as binders for target
proteins involved in the life processes of
F. oxysporum
. In this sense, molecular dynamics analysis showed that the ligand–protein
complexes have good stability with root-mean-square deviation (RMSD)
values within the allowed range. Therefore, the present study paves
the way for designing new antifungal compounds based on
l
-tryptophan-derived Schiff bases.