Conformational searching methods for small molecules. I. Study of the sybyl search method

Abstract

Abstract Several methods are available in the literature for the conformational analysis of small molecules. Each of these methods has some advantages and some disadvantages. Also, each of these methods may be expected to perform better or worse on different types of molecules. There is no clear calibration of each of these methods against a “standardized” set of molecules available in the literature. Such a reference work would be useful to the community because it would allow the choice of methods to be based on some facts. We attempted to provide a start to such a calibration in this article with an examination of the SYBYL SEARCH method. Methods for evaluating the performance of this method are described in detail and will be applied to all other available conformational analysis methods in future papers. © John Wiley & Sons, Inc.