Saturday, July 15, 2017

Planned papers for 2017 - six months in

In January I wrote about the papers I plan to publish and made this list:

Accepted
1. Protein structure refinement using a quantum mechanics-based chemical shielding predictor
2. Prediction of pKa values for drug-like molecules using semiempirical quantum chemical methods

Probable
3. Intermolecular Interactions in the Condensed Phase: Evaluation of Semi-empirical Quantum Mechanical Methods
4. Fast Prediction of the Regioselectivity of Electrophilic Aromatic Substitution Reactions of Heteroaromatic Systems Using Semi-Empirical Quantum Chemical Methods
5. Benchmarking cost vs. accuracy for computation of NMR shielding constants by quantum mechanical methods
6. Improved prediction of chemical shifts using machine learning
7. PM6 for all elements in GAMESS, including PCM interface

Probably not in 2017
8. Protonator: an open source program for the rapid prediction of the dominant protonation states of organic molecules in aqueous solution
9. pKa prediction using semi-empirical methods: difficult cases
10. Prediction of C-H pKa values and homolytic bond strengths using semi-empirical methods
11. High throughput transition state determination using semi-empirical methods

The status is

Published
1. Protein structure refinement using a quantum mechanics-based chemical shielding predictor
2. Prediction of pKa values for drug-like molecules using semiempirical quantum chemical methods

Probable (at least submission)
4. Fast Prediction of the Regioselectivity of Electrophilic Aromatic Substitution Reactions of Heteroaromatic Systems Using Semi-Empirical Quantum Chemical Methods

We had a draft ready to be sent in in mid-April, but decided to include a "few" more types of heteroaromatics and the study has now ballooned to nearly 600 compounds (up from about 150 in the original draft)! The calculations and most of the analysis is done, but the paper basically has to be rewritten, and this really has to be done by my synthetic chemistry co-author, since the study is now much more about the chemistries of these heteroaromatic and much less about the method.  Even though its out of my hands I am still hopeful that we can submit it this year.

9. pKa prediction using semi-empirical methods: difficult cases automation

This paper is 2/3 written and presents a completely automated PM3-based pKa prediction protocol. The method works quite well, but most outliers turn out to be due to high energy conformations. The main remaining issue is to find a conformer-search protocol that consistently gives low-energy conformations. Depending on how much time I have to devote to paper 4 and the proposal mentioned below, I am still hopefull I can get this published this year.

7. PM6 for all elements in GAMESS, including PCM interface

This will basically be a paper on the accuracy of the SMD method using semiempirical methods.  I'm hopefull we will submit this year, but there is still a lot to do.  Among other things, it explains why PM3/COSMO works best for pKa predictions: the solvation energy errors happen to be smallest for this method.

10. Prediction of C-H pKa values and homolytic bond strengths using semi-empirical methods

I am planning to submit a proposal on prediction of pKa,  homolytic bond strengths, etc as predictors of CH activation-sites. The proposals is due September 25th, so much of my "spare" time until then will be spent on getting preliminary results and writing.


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