Proton transfer from the inactive gas-phase nicotine structure to the bioactive aqueous-phase structure.

The role of water in the structural change of nicotine from its inactive form in the gas phase to its bioactive form in aqueous solution has been investigated by two complementary theoretical approaches, i.e., geometry optimizations and molecular dynamics. Structures of the lowest-energy nicotineH+−(H2O)n complexes protonated either on the pyridine (inactive form) or pyrrolidine (active form) ring have been calculated, as well as the free-energy barriers for the proton-transfer tautomerization between the two cycles. These structures show chains of 2−4 water molecules bridging the two protonation sites. The room-temperature free-energy barrier to tautomerization along the minimum-energy path from the pyridine to the pyrrolidine cycle drops rapidly when the number of water molecules increases from 0 to 4, but still remains rather high (16 kJ/mol with four water molecules), indicating that the proton transfer is a rather difficult and rare event. We compare results obtained through this explicit water molec...