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Quantum mechanical study of interactions between sunscreen ingredients and nucleotide bases

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Abstract

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.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgment is made to the donors of the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund for support of this research (grant number 58738-DNI6).

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  1. Department of Chemistry, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA

    Kyle R. Volk & Leah B. Casabianca

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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Data collection and analysis were performed by Kyle Volk and Leah Casabianca. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Leah Casabianca and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Leah B. Casabianca.

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Volk, K.R., Casabianca, L.B. Quantum mechanical study of interactions between sunscreen ingredients and nucleotide bases. J Mol Model 28, 243 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00894-022-05253-1

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