Intramolecular Hydrogen Bonding and Conformational Preferences of Arzanol—An Antioxidant Acylphloroglucinol

Arzanol is a naturally-occurring prenylated acylphloroglucinol isolated from Helichrysum italicum and exhibiting anti-oxidant, antibiotic and antiviral activities. The molecule contains an α-pyrone moiety attached to the phloroglucinol moiety through a methylene bridge. The presence of several hydrogen bond donor or acceptor sites makes intramolecular hydrogen bonding patterns the dominant stabilising factor. Conformers with all the possible different hydrogen bonding patterns were calculated at the HF/6-31G(d,p) and DFT/B3LYP/6-31+G(d,p) levels with fully relaxed geometry in vacuo and in three solvents—chloroform, acetonitrile and water (these levels being chosen to enable comparisons with previous studies on acylphloroglucinols). Calculations in solution were performed with the Polarisable Continuum Model. The results show that the lowest energy conformers have the highest number of stronger intramolecular hydrogen bonds. The influence of intramolecular hydrogen bonding patterns on the other molecular properties is also analysed.