Anabolic Steroids and Testosterone
PowerPoint

The first picture is of androstenedione coupled with 17-beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase, and the second picture is of testosterone and the androgen receptor

Calculations

I performed several calculations on testosterone and androstenedione using webMO and webAMBER. These are the structures I made, using webMO, of testosterone and androstenedione.

The only difference between the two structures is that there is an alcohol on testonsterone at the same position where there is a carbon double bonded to an oxygen on androstenedione.

I ran just about every job on webMO for both structures and decided that the OPT FREQ run would be most helpful. From this I was able to find the energies and enthalpies of both molecules. 

  • Androstenedione Results
    • 


    RHF energy=-2308232.45 kJ/mol
Enthalpy=-2307008.634 kJ/mol
Free Energy=-2307171.57 kJ/mol
Cv=71.120 cal/mol*K
Entropy=130.596 cal/mol*K
    

  •  Testosterone Results
    • 		


    RHF energy=-23112731.51 kJ/mol   
Enthalpy=-2309982.47 kJ/mol      
Free Energy=-2310147.212 kJ/mol	 
Cv=73.348 cal/mol*K	         
Entropy=132.106 cal/mol*K

    The energies and enthalpies of testosterone and androstenedione are very similar. This is to be expected since their structures are so similar.


    Here are the electrostatic potentials of Testosterone and Androstenedione. I made these pictures by performing a calculation on webMO using molecular orbitals.

    I also was able to successfully perform the minimization and molecular dynamics calculations on webAMBER for Testosterone and Androstenedione. Here are the final structures that accompanied those calculations.

    Using these structures I was able to construct movies on VMD. This is a movie of Androstenedione. The first video is just the molecule rotating and the second video is of the actual vibrations felt by the molecule.

    I also constructed a movie for testosterone. This shows both the rotation and the vibrations on the structure.



  • Conclusions

    • This project allowed me to better understand anabolic steroids, testosterone, and androstenedione. I was able to learn to use several computational tools like webMO, webAMBER, and VMD to study the structures of testosterone and androstendione as well as make movies that showed their actual structures and vibrations. For future research, I would like to try to use these computational tools to look at larger molecules. I would also like to learn to use POV-RAY.