Theoretical Investigation on the Substituent Effect of Halogen Atoms at the C8 Position of Adenine: Relative Stability, Vibrational Frequencies, and Raman Spectra of Tautomers.

We have theoretically investigated the substituent effect of adenine at the C8 position with a substituent X = H, F, Cl, and Br by using the density functional theory (DFT) at the B3LYP/6-311+G(d, p) level. The aim is to study the substituent effect of halogen atoms on the relative stability, vibrational frequencies, and solvation effect of tautomers. Our calculated results show that for substituted adenine molecules the N9H8X tautomer to be the most stable structure in gas phase at the present theoretical level. Here N9H8X denotes the hydrogen atom binds to the N9 position of imidazole ring and X denotes H, F, Cl, and Br atoms. The influence of the induced attraction of the fluorine substituent is significantly larger than chlorine and bromine ones. The halogen substituent effect has a significant influence on changes of vibrational frequencies and Raman intensities.