Trends in information theory-based chemical structure codification

Abstract

This report offers a chronological review of the most relevant applications of information theory in the codification of chemical structure information, through the so-called information indices. Basically, these are derived from the analysis of the statistical patterns of molecular structure representations, which include primitive global chemical formulae, chemical graphs, or matrix representations. Finally, new approaches that attempt to go "back to the roots" of information theory, in order to integrate other information-theoretic measures in chemical structure coding are discussed.