PHY634: NMR in physics and biology

        [Cr:4, Lc:3, Tt:1, Lb:0]

Course Outline

The course is intended for advanced MS and PhD students with an interest in applications of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to problems in structural biology, medicine and physics. The course will also include tutorials and hands-on experience with actual data obtained from the NMR facility.

• Physical basis of the NMR signal. Bloch equations and the macroscopic view. Zeeman splitting, Larmor precession, Resonance phenomenon, Spin echo. The NMR spectrometer. Basic hardware components including the magnet, rf transmitter, probe and receiver. Fourier transform NMR. Digitizing the signal using the DFT. The FFT algorithm. The rf pulse and its excitation profile. Data processing techniques for resolution enhancement and S/N improvement
• The chemical shift. The diamagnetic effect and the paramagnetic term. Chemical shift anisotropy. Hydrogen bonding. Scalar coupling. Investigation of exchange processes. The Nuclear Overhauser effect (NOE). The density matrix and the product operator formalism. Rf pulses and evolution. Coherence transfer. Origins of relaxation in systems of coupled spins. Application to gaining information about dynamics in biomolecules over biologically relevant timescales. The TROSY experiment.
• The basic 2DNMR experiment. Extension to three dimensions. Assignment strategies, triple resonance experiments and structure determination protocols for proteins.
• Overview of new and exciting developments in NMR: Nucleic acids and macromolecular assemblies. Drug design and discovery. Fast acquisition. Metabolic studies by NMR. Residual dipolar couplings. Protein folding by NMR.
• Pulsed field gradients and studies of diffusion by NMR. Applications to the physics of polymers, non-Newtonian fluids and macromolecular crowding.
• Basics of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Use of magnetic field gradients to create a correspondence between intensity, frequency or phase, and spatial coordinates. fMRI (Functional MRI) and imaging processes in the brain Basics of flow and MR angiography.

Recommended Reading

• M. H. Levitt, Spin Dynamics-Basics of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, 02nd edition, Wiley (2008).
• J. Cavanagh, W. J. Fairbrother, A. G. Palmer III and N. J. Skelton, Protein NMR spectroscopy, principles and practice, 2nd edition, Academic Press (2006).
• B. Blumich, Essential NMR: For scientists and engineers, Springer (2005).
• J. Keeler, Understanding NMR spectroscopy, 2nd edition, Wiley (2010).
• K. V. R Chary and G. Govil, NMR in Biological Systems: From molecules to human, Springer (2008).
• M. L. Lipton and E. Kanal, Totally accessible MRI, Springer (2008).
• D. W. McRobbie, E. A. Moore, M. J. Graves and M. R. Prince, MRI from Picture to Proton, 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press (2007).