A Conceptual DFT and Information-Theoretic Approach Towards QSPR Modeling in Polychlorobiphenyls

Quantitative structure–property relationship (QSPR) of various chlorine substituted biphenyl systems on the basis of linear and multi-linear regression (MLR) analysis is presented in this study. The determination of lipophilicity (log KOW) of the selected 133 polychlorobiphenyl (PCB) congeners is carried out taking the experimental log KOW as the dependent variable and the conceptual density functional theory (CDFT) and information theory (IT) based descriptors (global electrophilicity index (ω), its square term (ω2), and Shannon entropy (SS), GBP entropy (SGBP)) as independent variables. These are used to map the relationship between experimental log KOW and predicted log KOW. The best model is obtained using CDFT descriptor (ω) along with IT quantities (SS, SGBP) when combined linearly. The results show a very good coefficient of determination value (R2 = 0.9261) along with a high internal predicting ability (R2CV = 0.9208) which indicates the importance of the mentioned descriptors for the quantitative structure–property analysis of selected PCBs.