Aggregation of Kanamycin A: dimer formation with physiological cations.

Global cluster geometry optimization has focused so far on clusters of atoms or of compact molecules. We are demonstrating here that present-day techniques also allow to globally optimize clusters of extended, flexible molecules, and that such studies have immediate relevance to experiment. For example, recent experimental findings point to production of larger clusters of an aminoglycoside closely related to Kanamycin A (KA), together with certain preferred physiological cations, by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The present study provides first theoretical support for KA clustering, with a close examination of the monomer, the bare dimer, and dimers with sodium and potassium cations, employing global cluster structure optimization, in conjunction with force fields, semiempirical methods, DFT and ab-initio approaches. Interestingly, already at this stage the theoretical findings support the experimental observation that sodium cations are preferred over potassium cations in KA clusters, due to fundamentally different cationic embedding. Theoretically predicted NMR and IR spectra for these species indicate that it should be possible to experimentally detect the aggregation state and even the cationic embedding mode in such clusters.