An Atom Counting QSPR Protocol

A deceptively simple descriptor, viz. the number of carbon / non-hydrogenic atoms present in a molecule, is proposed for the development of useful quantitative-structure-property-relationship (QSPR) models. It is tested in models pertaining to the estimation of boiling point of alcohols, enthalpy of vaporization of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), n-octanol / water partition coefficient of PCBs and chloroanisoles, pKa values of carboxylic acids, phenols and alcohols etc. Very high values of various regression coefficients (R2, R2CV, R2Ad) suggest the significance of this descriptor which further improves in the resulting two-parameter QSPR models with electrophilicity or its local variant as an additional descriptor.