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Computational Studies of Natural Products

A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Informatics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 March 2026 | Viewed by 1405

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
A. E. Favorsky Irkutsk Institute of Chemistry, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Favorsky St. 1, 664033 Irkutsk, Russia
Interests: computational NMR; natural compounds; stereochemical studies
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Computational studies in chemistry are rapidly developing in parallel with experimental structural scrutiny of natural products and organic molecules of biological origin. Using modern computational methods, it has now become possible to perform spectral assignments and to identify structural misassignments of complex organic compounds. Computational methods thus provide a high level of correlation between calculated and experimental physicochemical and spectral properties, revealing their power to perform structural identification and stereochemical analysis of demanding natural products.

Currently, a number of computational methods are widely used for the elucidation of natural products. Among these methods, besides those based on the Density Functional Theory employing a wide range of functionals combined with various specialized basis sets, there are also pure non-empirical methods such as MP2, SOPPA, SOPPA(CCSD), CCSD, CCSD(T), CCSDT, and more advanced approaches including those at the relativistic level. All computations are carried out while taking into account the requirement of the lowest possible computational demands, which drastically increase with the number of atomic orbitals in the molecule under study. For natural compounds, this is a crucial limitation, which generally precludes the use of the most advanced computational methods for their identification and stereochemical analysis.

This Special Issue aims to showcase cutting-edge developments computational or NMR studies of natural products, whether extracted from natural sources or synthesized in the laboratories. We look forward to receiving your submissions.

Prof. Dr. Leonid B. Krivdin
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • computational chemistry
  • natural products
  • structural elucidation
  • Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)
  • Density Functional Theory (DFT)

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

24 pages, 3541 KB  
Article
Stereochemical Analysis of Natural Products: Bisindole Alkaloids of the Strychnos-Strychnos Type
by Dmitry A. Grigoriev, Valentin A. Semenov, Luc Angenot and Leonid B. Krivdin
Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2026, 27(1), 337; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms27010337 - 28 Dec 2025
Viewed by 531
Abstract
Results of the high-level computational study of 12 bisindole alkaloids of the Strychnos-Strychnos type are reported in addition of that of five retuline-like monomers frequently encountered in moieties constituting dimeric alkaloids. Based on the comparison of theoretical and experimental NMR chemical shifts, a [...] Read more.
Results of the high-level computational study of 12 bisindole alkaloids of the Strychnos-Strychnos type are reported in addition of that of five retuline-like monomers frequently encountered in moieties constituting dimeric alkaloids. Based on the comparison of theoretical and experimental NMR chemical shifts, a detailed conformational survey of these stereochemically rich natural products containing multiple asymmetric centers was performed. Our original methodology is based on searching multiple conformational states, geometry optimization, and high-level NMR calculations at the DFT level. Taking into account all known experimental chemical shifts together with their calculated values in the natural products under study, a correlation estimate of NMR chemical shifts was performed by using statistical descriptors. In general, a good agreement of the performed calculations with experiment was achieved, which is manifested by the Corrected Mean Absolute Error of about 0.2 ppm for 1H and 1.9 ppm for 13C NMR chemical shifts in this series. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Computational Studies of Natural Products)
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