Mechanism-based quantitative structure–activity relationships for the inhibition of substituted phenols on germination rate of Cucumis sativus

Comparative inhibition activity (GC50) of 42 structurally diverse substituted phenols on seed germination rate of Cucumis sativus was investigated. Quantitative structure–activity relationships (QSARs) were developed by using hydrophobicity (1-octanol/water partition coefficient, logKow) and electrophilicity (the energy of the lowest unoccupied molecule orbital, Elumo) for the toxicity of phenols according to their modes of toxic action. Most phenols elicited their response via a polar narcotic mechanism and a highly significant log Kow-based model was obtained (GC50=0.92logKow+1.99, r2=0.84, n=29). The inclusion of Elumo greatly improved the predictive power of the polar narcotic QSAR (GC50=0.88logKow−0.30Elumo+1.99, r2=0.93, n=29). pKa proved to be an insignificant influencing factor in this study. Poor correlation with hydrophobicity and strong correlation with electrophilicity were observed for the nine bio-reactive chemicals. Their elevated toxicity was considerably underestimated by the polar narcotic logKow-dependent QSAR. The nine chemicals consist of selected nitro-substituted phenols, hydroquinone, catechol and 2-aminophenol. Their excess toxic potency could be explained by their molecular structure involving in vivo reaction with bio-macromolecules. Strong dissociation of carboxyl group of the four benzoic acid derivatives greatly decreased their observed toxicity. In an effort to model all chemicals including polar narcotics and bio-reactive chemicals, a response-surface analysis with the toxicity, logKow and Elumo was performed. This resulted in a highly predictive two-parameter QSAR for most of the chemicals (GC50=0.70logKow−0.66Elumo+2.17, r2=0.89, n=36). Catechol and 2,4-dinitrophenol proved to be outliers of this model and their much high toxicity was explained.