Calculation of the hydration free energy difference between pyridine and its methyl-substituted derivatives by computer simulation methods.

The difference of the hydration free energy of pyridine and its methyl- and symmetrically dimethyl-substituted derivatives has been calculated by the method of free energy perturbation. To check the precision of the results obtained, we have repeated the calculations using thermodynamic integration over different paths. Besides the hydration free energy, the difference in the energy and entropy of hydration between pyridine and monomethyl- and dimethylpyridines has also been determined. The obtained results clearly show that the hydration free energy of the pyridine derivatives becomes more negative with each additional methyl group. However, the accuracy of the calculation does not allow us to draw any conclusion about the dependence of the hydration free energy on the location of the methyl group. The analysis of the Coulomb and Lennard-Jones contributions to the hydration free energy differences has shown the dominance of the latter term. The comparison of the hydration energy and free energy values has shown that there is a strong compensation effect between the energetic and entropic terms of the free energy. The hydration energy of the solute becomes considerably more negative with each additional methyl group due to the dispersion attraction between the methyl group and the surrounding water molecules. The introduction of a methyl group results in an approximately 30 J/(mol K) decrease of the entropy of hydration, and hence, at 300 K, the entropic contribution to the hydration free energy increases by about 9 kJ/mol. Due to their opposite signs, the entropic and energetic contributions largely cancel each other, resulting in approximately an order of magnitude smaller value for the free energy.