Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 15, 2026

Coulomb Explosion Imaging as a Tool to Distinguish Between Stereoisomers
Published on: August 18, 2017
Novel approach for the numerical characterization of molecular chirality
Ramanathan Natarajan1, Subhash C Basak, Terrence S Neumann
1Natural Resources Research Institute, University of Minnesota Duluth, 5013 Miller Trunk Highway, Duluth, Minnesota 55811, USA.
Abstract:
The use of chiral compounds as pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals continues to increase, warranting numerical characterization of chirality in order to develop structure-activity relationship models involving these compounds. Enantiomers are identical in all scalar properties and, hence, are not differentiated by topological indices and 3-D descriptors. Three distinct measures of chirality were developed to discriminate diastereomers and enantiomers. The novel topological indices treat chirality as a continuous measure, and hence we prefer to call it the Relative Chirality Index (RCI). Application of RCI in developing SAR is illustrated with the repellency data for the diastereomers of picaridin and AI3-37220.
Related Concept Videos
Chirality in Nature
Molecules with Multiple Chiral Centers
Chirality
Chiral objects exhibit a sense of handedness when they interact with another chiral object. For example, our left foot can only fit in the left shoe and not in the right shoe. Achiral objects — objects that have...
Prochirality
Stereoisomerism of Cyclic Compounds
Chirality at Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Sulfur
A consequence of chirality is the need for enantiomeric resolution. While this is theoretically possible for all...

