The Chemical Shift of the Alpha Carbon in Amino-Acids as a Parameter for QSAR Studies of Oligopeptides

The 13C-NMR chemical shift δH of the α-carbon in amino-acids is proposed as a new parameter for QSAR studies of biologically active oligopeptides. δH which is known for common amino-acids, is mainly a measure of the electronic shielding of the α-carbon. In the aliphatic series, it is computable by empirical rules and very sensitive to β-branching. In this study, δH is shown to describe accurately as a single continuous parameter the variations of the biological activity of angiotensin II, when the residue in its position 5 is varied.