Quantum descriptors for predictive toxicology of halogenated aliphatic hydrocarbons

In order to improve Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships (QSARs) for halogenated aliphatics (HA) and to better understand the biophysical mechanism of toxic response to these ubiquitous chemicals, we employ improved quantum-mechanical descriptors to account for HA electrophilicity. We demonstrate that, unlike the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital energy, ELUMO, which was previously used as a descriptor, the electron affinity can be systematically improved by application of higher levels of theory. We also show that employing the reciprocal of ELUMO, which is more consistent with frontier molecular orbital (FMO) theory, improves the correlations with in vitro toxicity data. We offer explanations based on FMO theory for a result from our previous work, in which the LUMO energies of HA anions correlated surprisingly well with in vitro toxicity data. Additional descriptors are also suggested and interpreted in terms of the accepted biophysical mechanism of toxic response to HAs and new QSARs are derived for various chemical categories that compose the data set employed. These alternate descriptors provide important insight and could benefit other classes of compounds where the biophysical mechanism of toxic response involves dissociative attachment.