Environmental Analysis by ab Initio Quantum Mechanical Computation and Gas Chromatography/Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometry.

Computational chemistry, in conjunction with gas chromatography/mass spectrometry/Fourier transform infrared spectrometry (GC/MS/FT-IR), was used to tentatively identify seven tetrachlorobutadiene (TCBD) isomers detected in an environmental sample. Computation of the TCBD infrared spectra was performed with the Gaussian quantum chemistry software. The Hartree-Fock/6-31G* level of theory was employed, with IR frequencies scaled by a standard factor of 0.89. This approach shows great promise as a means of characterizing or confirming environmental analyte identifications when standard spectra, or pure standards required to measure standard spectra, are unavailable.

Vibrational analysis of nucleic acids. I. The phosphodiester group in dimethyl phosphate model compounds: (CH3O)2PO2-, (CD3O)2PO2-, and (13CH3O)2PO2-.

Normal coordinate analyses and vibrational assignments are presented for the dimethyl phosphate anion [(CH3O)2PO2-] and its deuteriomethyl [(CD3O)2PO2-] and carbon-13 [(13CH3O)2PO2-] derivatives in the gauche-gauche conformation. The dimethyl phosphate anion, which is the simplest model for the nucleic acid phosphodiester moiety, exhibits many of the spectral complexities of DNA and RNA and has previously resisted a complete and consistent vibrational analysis. In the present study we make use of new experimental data on the dimethyl phosphate isotopomers, including Raman depolarization measurements, to develop a consistent valence force field for normal modes of the C--O--P--O--C phosphodiester network and its hydrogenic substituents, as well as for stretching and bending modes of the O--P--O network of the anionic phosphodioxy group (PO2-). The force field established for dimethyl phosphate incorporates one significant nonbonded force constant, introduced from ab initio calculations, to account for interaction between the two ester C--O bonds. This study resolves previous problematic assignments for conformation-sensitive symmetric (in-phase) and asymmetric (out-of-phase) skeletal stretching modes of the ester linkages and demonstrates substantial anharmonicity in the hydrogen-stretching vibrations of the methyl substituents. New assignments are proposed for Raman bands of the phosphodioxy group, which may serve as potential indicators of structure and interaction of the DNA phosphates.