For the fifth year in a row my research group has participated in this traditional meeting on theoretical and computational chemistry, now at the beautiful city of Merida in southeastern Mexico.

Several distinguished international guests included Profs. Jose Luis Mendoza (Florida State University), Adrián Roitberg (University of Florida), Vincent Ortiz (Auburn University) and Paul Ayers (McMaster U. Canada); Their contributions rounded up nicely those of household names like Drs. Alberto Vela, Gabriel Merino (CINVESTAV) (the latter was also the main organizer), Jesus Hernández-Trujillo (UNAM), Jose Luis Gazquez (UAM-I), Óscar Jimenez (Guanajuato), and so many others who were also present.

My students presented four posters summarized below:

1) Maru Sandoval and Gustavo Mondragón on Photosynthesis, particularly the search for exciton transference mechanisms in both natural and theoretical arrangements of photosynthetic pigments. Some very exciting results have been observed; their publication is really near.

2) Raúl Torres and Gustavo Mondragón presented their work on arsenic removing calixarenes, published earlier this year, and the extension of said work to As(III) acids. Graphene oxide is now considered in our simulations as per the experimental work of our colleagues, Prof. Reyes Sierra and Prof. Eddie Lopez-Honorato.

3) Marco Diaz, Guillermo Caballero, Gustavo Mondragón and Raúl Torres had this poster on the calculation of sigma holes as descriptors for predicting pka values in organic acids. Their +1600 calculations project has found the best levels of theory (and ruled out some like B3LYP, of course) with some nice correlations. Yet, much work is still to be done but we’re on the right track.

4) Durbis Castillo presented his work on molecular docking and dynamics of a large library of HIV-1 entry inhibitors for which he uses the suite MAESTRO as a continuation of another project of ours. His enormous library is now in the hundredths of thousands and although we’re facing some technical difficulties, Durbis is thriving in his search. This is our first serious attempt towards a more mature drug discovery project; a manuscript should be ready in the first part of next year.

This guys and the rest of the lab who weren’t present are the ones who make our research flourish and they’ve all earned a day or two at the beach!

Here’s to fifteen more years of RMFQT!