Precise Molecular Structures of Cysteine, Cystine, Hydrogen-Bonded Dicysteine, Cysteine Dipeptide, Glutathione and Acetyl Cysteine Based on Additivity of Atomic Radii

Abstract

Structures of molecules are usually represented by arbitrary line drawings, ball and stick or space filling models. In recent years, the author found that using the appropriate radii of atoms and ions, bond lengths in inorganic, organic and biomolecules and of hydrogen bonds are exact sums of the radii of the adjacent atoms and or ions. This additivity of atomic radii was shown to hold also for the bond lengths in the twenty essential amino acids. On this basis, the atomic structures of the very important molecules mentioned in the title, have been presented here for the first time. It is hoped that these precise structures and their dimensions will shed new light into their role in biochemistry, pharmaceutical chemistry, environmental chemistry, biomedicine and in the mechanism of protein folding.