Double hydrogen bond interaction in 7-azaindole complexes with protic solvents

Abstract

The double hydrogen bond interaction between 7-azaindole (7AI) and protic solvents including methanol (MeOH), formamide (FM), formic acid (FA), pyridone (PY) and 7AI has been investigated as a proper model of mutations generated by tautomeric shifts in hydrogen-bonded bases of DNA. The results confirm electrostatic nature for all considered hydrogen bonds except for NH hydrogen bond in 7AI-FA. The largest interaction and polarization energies are obtained for 7AI-FA by means of energy decomposition analyses (EDA). The EDA results show an inverse competitive correlation between polarization and electrostatic components of attraction energy to determine the nature of hydrogen bond. The red-shifted hydrogen bonds are identified for all complexes as a result of hyperconjugation, except for 7AI-MeOH, which its blue-shift effect is attributed to the rehybridization dominating of CH bond. Investigation of aromaticity indices for 7AI complexes represents an increase in aromaticity of pentagonal ring and a decrease in hexagonal ring. Finally, the double hydrogen bond between 7AI and FA is identified as dominant interaction to achieve the tautomerization of 7AI in all applied approaches.

Keywords: 7-Azaindole; Aromaticity; Atoms in molecules; Double hydrogen bond; Energy decomposition analysis; Natural bond orbital; Protic solvent.