Analysis of inelastic neutron scattering results on model compounds of the nitrogenous bases of the nucleotides

The role that model compounds can play in understanding the vibrational eigenvectors of molecules is discussed. Assigning the spectra of model compounds is of particular importance and the individual-scaling approach, that has been used with isolated molecule ab-initio calculations, is outlined. Special emphasis is given to recent work on assigning the spectra of three 5-6 heterobicyclic systems; indole, benzimidazole and isatin. (author)