Use of molecular negentropy to encode structure governing biological activity.

A drug molecule is considered to be an information source with an information content available to receptive tissue. In nonspecific interactions, much of the information content has quality as judged by the receptor. Quantitation of the information content using Shannon's equation gives the molecular negentropy. This index is shown to rank molecules according to symmetry and to encode structural characteristics influencing physical properties and biological activity in certain cases.