Experimental and theoretical dipole moments of purines in their ground and lowest excited singlet states

Abstract

The ground-state dipole moments of seven biologically important purines (purine, 6-chloropurine, 6-mercaptopurine, hypoxanthine, theobromine, theophylline and caffeine) were determined at 25°C in acetic acid (all the above compounds with the exception of purine) and in ethyl acetate (purine, theophylline and caffeine). Because of its low solubility, it was not possible to measure the dipole moment of uric acid. The first excited singlet-state dipole moments were obtained on the basis of the Bakhshiev and Chamma—Viallet equations using the variation of the Stokes shift with the solvent dielectric constant-refractive index term. The theoretical dipole moments for all the purines listed above and including uric acid were calculated by combining the use of the PPP (π-LCI-SCF-MO) method for the π-contribution to the overall dipole moment with the σ-contribution obtained as a vector sum of the σbond moments and group moments. The experimental and theoretical values were compared with the data available in the literature for some of the purines under study. For several purines, the calculations were carried out for different tautomeric forms. Excited singlet-state dipole moments are smaller than the ground-state values by 0.8 to 2.2 Debye units for all purines under study with the exception of 6-chloropurine. The effects of the structure upon the ground- and excited-state dipole moments of the purines are discussed.