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Handbook of Computational Chemistry pp 2065–2093Cite as

Molecular Descriptors

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Abstract

Despite the number of available chemicals growing exponentially, testing of their toxicological and environmental behavior is often a critical issue and alternative strategies are required. Additionally, there is the need to predict properties of not yet synthesized compounds to reduce the costs of synthesis, selecting only those that have the maximal potential to be active and nontoxic compounds. In order to evaluate chemical properties avoiding chemical synthesis and reducing expensive and time-demanding laboratory testing, it is necessary to build in silico models establishing a mathematical relationship between the structures of molecules and the considered properties (quantitative structure–activity relationships, QSARs). Molecular descriptors play a fundamental role in QSAR and other in silico models since they formally are the numerical representation of a molecular structure. Molecular descriptors can be classified using different criteria. Among them, there are two main categories, experimental and theoretical descriptors. The basis to understand and perform molecular descriptor calculation, the different theoretical descriptor categories together with their perspectives are described in this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Milano-Bicocca, 20126, Milan, Italy

    Andrea Mauri, Viviana Consonni & Roberto Todeschini

Authors
  1. Andrea Mauri
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  2. Viviana Consonni
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  3. Roberto Todeschini
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrea Mauri .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Interdisciplinary Center for Nanotoxicity, Jackson State University, Jackson, Mississippi, USA

    Jerzy Leszczynski

  2. Faculty of Chemistry, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland

    Anna Kaczmarek-Kedziera

  3. Laboratory of Environmental Chemometrics, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Gdańsk, Gdańsk, Poland

    Tomasz Puzyn

  4. Institute of Biology, Medicinal Chemistry and Biotechnology, National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens, Greece

    Manthos G. Papadopoulos

  5. Institute of Biology, Medicinal Chemistry and Biotechnology, National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens, Greece

    Heribert Reis

  6. US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Vicksburg, Mississippi, USA

    Manoj K. Shukla

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Mauri, A., Consonni, V., Todeschini, R. (2017). Molecular Descriptors. In: Leszczynski, J., Kaczmarek-Kedziera, A., Puzyn, T., G. Papadopoulos, M., Reis, H., K. Shukla, M. (eds) Handbook of Computational Chemistry. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27282-5_51

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