Quantum mechanical study of interactions between sunscreen ingredients and nucleotide bases

• Published in: Journal of molecular modeling Vol. 28; no. 9; p. 243
• Main Authors: Volk, Kyle R., Casabianca, Leah B.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.09.2022; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Binding energy; Characterization and Evaluation of Materials; Chemistry; Chemistry and Materials Science; Computer Appl. in Life Sciences; Computer Applications in Chemistry; Density functional theory; Hydrogen bonding; Hydrogen bonds; Hydrogen-based energy; Ingredients; Molecular Medicine; Nucleotides; Original Paper; Quantum mechanics; Sun screens; Theoretical and Computational Chemistry; Oxybenzone; Pi-stacking; Homosalate; Sunscreen; Nucleotide bases; DNA
• ISSN: 1610-2940; 0948-5023
• DOI: 10.1007/s00894-022-05253-1

Interactions between the popular sunscreen ingredients oxybenzone and homosalate and DNA bases have been studied using density functional theory and  ab initio methods. Low-energy structures for each sunscreen ingredient interacting with each nucleotide base in either a pi-stacked or hydrogen-bonded fashion were found. The binding energies are comparable to those for the Watson–Crick–Franklin Ade-Thy and Cyt-Gua pairs. Pi-stacked and hydrogen-bonded structures are comparable in energy, with hydrogen-bonded structures having a more negative counterpoise-corrected binding energy, while the final pi-stacked structures are lower in energy. This is due to a geometrical rearrangement required to form the hydrogen bonds that raise the total energy of the complex. It was also found that when using the M06-2X density functional, the STO-3G basis set favors hydrogen bonding, but 6-31G(d) and 6–31 + G(s) basis sets predict similar binding geometries.