6533b859fe1ef96bd12b7a5f

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Muscimol hydration and vibrational spectroscopy – The impact of explicit and implicit water

subject

Density Functional Theory (DFT)Hydration energyMuscimolTautomersMolecular Dynamics (MD)Hydrogen bonds

description

The presented study focuses on the interaction of the well-known neurotoxin muscimol with water. Two approaches for the water solvent are applied – the explicit and the implicit. The muscimol-water clusters were obtained by the molecular dynamics simulations and the first solvation shell was kept for further studies. Implicit water was mimicked via the polarized continuum model (PCM). All three tautomeric forms of the free muscimol molecule are considered in the calculations. The combined theoretical and experimental vibrational IR and Raman studies determined the stability of the prevailing zwitterion form in water. We proved that water molecules in the first solvation shell are crucial for the correct prediction of structural and spectroscopic parameters of muscimol due to its ability to form strong hydrogen bonds. We believe that our findings will shed some light on the binding preferences of muscimol with the γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) receptor.

10.1016/j.molliq.2022.11987010.1016/j.molliq.2022.119870https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molliq.2022.119870 10.1016/j.molliq.2022.119870