Computational study of peptide plane stacking with polar and ionizable amino acid side chains

Parallel and T-shaped stacking interactions of the peptide plane with polar and ionizable amino acid side chains (including aspartic/glutamic acid, asparagine/glutamine, and arginine) are investigated using the quantum mechanical MP2 and CCSD computational methods. It is found that the electrostatic interaction plays an essential role in determining the optimal stacking configurations for all investigated stacking models. For certain complexes, the dispersion interaction also contributes considerably to stacking. In the gas phase, the stacking interaction of the charged system is stronger than that of the neutral system, and T-shaped stacking is generally more preferred than parallel stacking, with the stacking energy in the range of -4 to -18 kcal/mol. The solvation effect overall weakens stacking, especially for the charged system and the T-shaped stacking configurations. In water, the interaction energies of different stacking models are comparable.