The Chirality of Isotopomers of Glycine Compared using Next-Generation QTAIM

The effect of the presence of a deuterium (D) or tritium (T) isotope bonded to the alpha carbon of glycine is determined without the need to apply external forces e.g. electric fields or using normal mode analysis. Isotopic effects were accounted for using the mass-dependent diagonal Born-Oppenheimer energy correction (DBOC) at the CCSD level of theory. We calculated the stress tensor trajectories of the dominant C-N bond within next generation quantum theory of atoms in molecules (NG-QTAIM). S-character chirality was discovered using the stress tensor trajectories, instead of the Cahn–Ingold–Prelog (CIP) rules, for ordinary glycine. The S-character chirality was preserved after the substitution of the H on the alpha carbon for a D isotope but transformed to R-character chirality after replacement with the T isotope. This reversal of the chirality depending on the presence of a single D or T isotope bound to the alpha carbon adds to the debate on the nature of the extraterrestrial origins of chirality in simple amino acids. We demonstrate that NG-QTAIM is a promising tool for understanding isotopic induced electronic charge density changes, useful in analysis of infrared (IR) or circular dichroism (CD) spectra explaining changes in mode couplings and bands intensities or sign.