Integrating DFT and Machine Learning to Evaluate Detoxification Efficiency of an Allicin– Fulvic Acid

ISBN: 979-8-89480-841-3


Allicin is a reactive sulfur-based antioxidant and Fulvic acid is a stable chelator. This paper studies how a Allicin– Fulvic Acid (FA–Al) conjugate improves metalchelating properties using molecular analysis and machine learning. The research predicts that the combination of allicin thiol–sulfoxide reactivity with fulvic acid polycarboxylic oxygen donors will produce a more stable compound that binds to metals better. The research team used DFT (ωB97X-D/def2-TZVP level under PCM-water solvation) to obtain binding energy (ΔE) values and HOMO–LUMO gaps and electrostatic potential (ESP) maps for 16 metal ions which included Cr², Fe³, Hg², Cu², Pb², Zn², Cd², Co², Fe², Mn², Ca², Mg², Al³, Ni², UO² and As³ ions (all cations). The binding energies of the FA-Al conjugate reached between −4.6 eV and −5.1 eV which exceeded the binding energies of fulvic acid (−3.1 to −3.7 eV) and allicin (−2.1 to −2.6 eV) thus proving its stronger thermodynamic binding properties. The conjugate formed dual-site chelation bonds through oxygen-dentate interactions with hard acids Al³, Fe³ and UO² ions and sulfur-assisted soft-core coordination with Pb², Cd² and Hg² cations. The electrostatic potential mapping showed that the carboxylate and sulfinyl sites of the compound possess electron-rich areas which enable multi-dentate coordination. The Random Forest regression model based on Integrating DFT and Machine Learning to Evaluate Detoxification Efficiency of an Allicin– Fulvic Acid Sieun Jeong 16 physicochemical descriptors achieved R² = 0.92 and 0.08 eV mean absolute error when predicting binding energy and affinity through cross-validation. The model's feature importance analysis showed that ionic charge and Pauling electronegativity and ΔGap change values determine the strength of metal binding. The Allicin–Fulvic conjugate shows improved chelation properties and wide-range selectivity and strong thermodynamic stability which makes it suitable for biological multi-metal detoxification applications. The DFT–AI predictive system enables researchers to create new antioxidant and chelating agents with adjustable selectivity and bioavailability through scalable design methods.

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