Quantum mechanical treatment of As³⁺-thiol model compounds: implication for the core structure of As(III)-metallothionein

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• 作者：Roobee Garla ; Narinder Kaur ; Mohinder Pal Bansal…
• 关键词：Arsenic ; thiol interactions ; DFT calculations ; Metallothionein ; UV ; Vis spectra
• 刊名：Journal of Molecular Modeling
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：March 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：23
• 期：3
• 全文大小：
• 刊物类别：Chemistry and Materials Science
• 刊物主题：Computer Applications in Chemistry; Molecular Medicine; Computer Appl. in Life Sciences; Characterization and Evaluation of Materials; Theoretical and Computational Chemistry;
• 出版者：Springer Berlin Heidelberg
• ISSN：0948-5023
• 卷排序：23

文摘

Exposure to inorganic arsenic (As) is one of the major health concerns in several regions around the world. Binding of As(III) with thiols is central to the mechanisms related to its toxicity, detoxification, and therapeutic effects. Due to its high thiol content, metallothionein (MT) is presumed to play an important role in case of arsenic toxicity. Consequences of these As-thiol interactions are not yet clear due to various difficulties in the characterization of arsenic bound proteins by spectroscopic techniques. Computational modeling can be a reliable approach in predicting the molecular structures of such complexes. This paper presents the results of a systematic study on different As(III)-thiol model compounds conducted by both ab initio and DFT methods with different Gaussian type basis sets. Proficiency of these theoretical methods has been evaluated in terms of bond lengths, bond angles, free energy, partial atomic charges, computational cost, and comparison with the experimental data. It has been demonstrated that the DFT-B3LYP/6-311+G(3df) functional offers better accuracy in predicting the structure and the UV absorption spectra of As(III)-thiol complexes. The results of the present study also helps in defining the boundaries for the core of arsenic bound MT so that quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical (QM/MM) methods can be employed to predict the structural and functional aspects of the protein.