Systematic conformational search analysis of the SRR and RRR epimers of 7-hydroxymatairesinol

An extensive and systematic conformational search was performed on the two epimers of the natural lignan 7-hydroxymatairesinol (HMR), by means of a home-made Systematic Conformational Search Analysis (SCSA) code, designed to select more and more stable conformers through sequential geometry optimization of trial structures at increasing levels of calculation theory. In the present case, the starting molecular structures were selected by the semi-empirical AM1 method and filtered – i.e. decreased in number by choosing the more stable species – on the basis of their energy calculated by the HF method and the 6-31G(d) basis set. The geometries obtained were further refined by performing densit…