The SAMPL3 blind prediction challenge: transfer energy overview

Prediction of the free energy of solvation of a small molecule, or its transfer energy, is a necessary step along the path towards calculating the interactions between molecules that occur in an aqueous environment. A set of these transfer energies were gathered from the literature for series of chlorinated molecules with varying numbers of chlorines based on ethane, biphenyl, and dibenzo-p-dioxin. This focused set of molecules were then provided as a blinded challenge to assess the ability of current computational solvation methods to accurately model the interactions between water and increasingly chlorinated compounds. This was presented as part of the SAMPL3 challenge, which represented the fourth iterative blind prediction challenge involving transfer energies. The results of this exercise demonstrate that the field in general has difficulty predicting the transfer energies of more highly chlorinated compounds, and that methods seem to be erring in the same direction.