Can We Describe Biological Systems with Quantum Mechanics?

Quantum Mechanics is the favourite theory to predict the structure of any group of atoms, including biological molecules. Due to numerous difficulties, however, it is necessary to introduce a series of approximations to overcome such impediments. We present a coarse-grained model of circular dichroism (CD) that is based on the theory of optical activity, developed by DeVoe, in order to predict CD spectra. In first stage, we determine the polarisability of individual monomers (residues, in the case of peptides) from experiments of molar absorptivity. The complex polarisabilities are used together with peptide structures obtained by density functional theory and other methods to determine their corresponding CD spectra, which are in reasonable agreement with their experimental counterparts.