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I am studying aromaticity, and apparently, aromaticity is common in biological molecules, just like 6-member rings (relieve ring strain and angle strain). I was wondering: is it because aromaticity makes the compound more stable to prevent unwanted reactions/modifications?

Thank you!

EDIT:

I finally found something interesting. Tyrosine, phenylalanine, and tryptophan interacts with cation-pi interactions in proteins to stabilize secondary structures. They are also over-represented in protein binding sites.

Johnathan
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    Orthogonal mechanism that comes to mind : evolution tried random molecules -> lower energy / more stable molecules were more likely to be tried -> evolution disproportionately tried aromatic molecules -> biological compounds have lots of aromaticity. – SCH Dec 18 '16 at 22:48
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    Personally I don't think this is representative of anything. Of the 20 amino acids only 4 have aromatic rings. – orthocresol Dec 19 '16 at 03:46
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    Ah, well, as for why they are over-represented in binding sites, that's a different question (and pretty interesting, too). – orthocresol Dec 19 '16 at 18:11
  • Pi-stacking between the aromatic nucleobases in DNA helps stabilize the double helix structure. – electronpusher Dec 20 '16 at 00:53
  • Relared - http://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/60055/pi-electron-stacking-how-does-it-work – Nilay Ghosh Dec 24 '16 at 04:10

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