THE ANGULAR DEPENDENCE OF NUCLEAR SPIN-SPIN COUPLING CONSTANTS IN COMPOUNDS WHICH MODEL THE PEPTIDE BACKBONE (POLYPEPTIDES, LACTAMS).

Abstract

Because polypeptides present a repeating sequence of amide bonds, lactams provide good model compounds for investigating the angular dependencies of coupling constants over a range of rigid conformations. A number of ¹³C labeled lactams were synthesized to cover a range of dihedral angles; experimental and theoretical carbon-carbon and carbon-hydrogen coupling constants were obtained to give the relationships between the vicinal coupling constants ³J[C(O)-N-C-C], ³J[C(O)-N-C-H] and dihedral angle φ. Vicinal ¹³C-¹³C coupling constants for dihedral angles in the range of 90° to 180° were obtained unambiguously from the coupling between the carbonyl and carbons in the side chains of lactams. However, due to coupling via multiple paths, vicinal ¹³C-¹³C coupling constants for dihedral angles ranging from 0° to 90° were estimated by excluding the contributions from the geminal ²J[C(O)-C-C] or vicinal ³J[C(O)-C-C-C] couplings in the lactam rings. The experimental and theoretical results show that the angular dependence of vicinal ¹³C-¹³C coupling constants do not follow a simple Karplus type relationship, especially at small dihedral angles. It was found that geminal ²J[C(O)-N-C] were small ( < 0.3 Hz). However, the ²J[C(O)-N-C] in the cis arrangement are shifted to about 2.2 Hz in N-methyl substituted lactams while in the trans arrangement the values are about 4.4 Hz. Geminal ¹³C-¹³C coupling constants ²J[(C(O)-N-C)] also provide a useful tool in stereochemical studies.