Effects of geometry and chemistry on hydrophobic solvation.

ABSTRACT: Inserting an uncharged van der Waals (vdw) cavity into water disrupts the distribution of water and creates attractive dispersion interactions between the solvent and solute. This free-energy change is the hydrophobic solvation energy (ΔG(vdw)). Frequently, it is assumed to be linear in the solvent-accessible surface area, with a positive surface tension (γ) that is independent of the properties of the molecule. However, we found that γ for a set of alkanes differed from that for four configurations of decaalanine, and γ = -5 was negative for the decaalanines. These findings conflict with the notion that ΔG(vdw) favors smaller A. We broke ΔG(vdw) into the free energy required to exclude water from the vdw cavity (ΔG(rep)) and the free energy of forming the attractive interactions between t

SUBMITTER: Harris RC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4205605 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature