Helena Heissigerová, Ivan Raich

( Institute of Chemical Technology, 166 28 Prague, Czech republic;

As an aid for interpretation of NMR spectra of conformationally flexible furanose saccharides, molecular dynamic simulations of all four configurational isomers of methyl tetrofuranosides were performed in vacuo and in water. Starting geometries were obtained from previous optimizations using MM3 force-field. For comparison, two MD packages were tested and evaluated. Relevant structural parameters were extracted from raw data and populations of all conformers were calculated. Dihedral angles were used for the calculation of vicinal coupling constants using two different modifications of Karplus’ equation and time-averaged coupling constants were compared with experimental values. NMR and IR data of compounds under investigation were calculated at the ab initio level in Gaussian 98W.