Conformational flexibility of pyrimidine rings of nucleic acid bases in polar environment: PCM study

The results of calculations of molecular structures of nucleic acid bases in polar environment using Polarized Continuum Model of solvent combined with the MP2/cc-pvdz level of ab initio theory demonstrate considerable polarization of thymine, cytosine, and guanine. This phenomenon can be related to considerable contribution of zwitter-ionic resonant forms into total structure of the studied species. It leads to significant increase (about 30%) of frequencies of the out-of-plane pyrimidine ring vibrations and is related to considerable decrease of conformational flexibility of heterocycle due to smaller out-of-plane deformability of pyrimidine ring in zwitter-ionic resonant forms. In the case of adenine, the presence of a polar environment results in an increase of conformational flexibility of pyrimidine ring.