An efficient and elegant method was developed for the preparation of substituted phenyl vinyl ketones using low-cost and commercially available ethyl chloroformate and diisopropylethylamine as reagents. This methodology was also applied to the synthesis of natural products such as mimosifoliol and quinolines. Frontier molecular orbital (FMO) studies on mimosifoliol were carried out to understand its chemical reactivity. Electron localization function (ELF) and localized orbital locator (LOL) analysis gave information about localized and delocalized electrons. Reduced density gradient (RDG) analysis gave information on steric, van der Waals, and hydrogen-bonding interactions. Molecular electrostatic potential (MEP) and Fukui functions gave information about nucleophilic and electrophilic attack. Nonlinear optical (NLO) analysis represented the mimosifoliol good NLO material. Molecular docking showed that the mimosifoliol compound had effectively inhibited the aspulvinone dimethylallyltransferase enzyme.
Keywords: aspulvinone dimethylallyltransferase; mimosifoliol; molecular docking; quinolines.