Molecular orbital calculations and quantitative structure-activity relationships for some polyaromatic hydrocarbons.

1. Correlations between biological activity and electronic structure for 7 polyaromatic hydrocarbons are reported. 2. Molecular orbital (MO) calculations by the MINDO/3 method indicate that the hydrophobic parameter, log P (the logarithm of the octanol/water partition coefficient) exhibits a parallelism with total electrophilic superdelocalizability, and a similar relationship is shown with protein binding. 3. Inhibition of dimethylnitrosamine (DMN) demethylase activity is linearly related to total nucleophilic superdelocalizability, and other correlations are shown with mutagenicity and benzo[a]pyrene hydroxylase (AHH) activity.