NMR Lab

Emerald BioStructures maintains and operates a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectroscopy Laboratory with a 500 MHz Varian Inova Unity spectrometer to provide solution-state NMR data on small molecules, proteins, and a variety of biological complexes. We use NMR spectroscopy for small molecule structure elucidation, fragment-based screening, and ligand binding studies. Quantitative NMR methods such as saturation transfer difference (STD NMR) or NOESY can also be applied to calculate affinity constants for ligand-protein interactions. NMR is particularly adept at detecting weak-binding interactions between biological drug targets and small molecular fragments, such as those contained in our Fragments of Life™ small molecule screening library. Applying NMR-based fragment screening in parallel with X-ray crystallography can add critical information on ligand-protein binding interactions to accelerate early-stage structure-based drug design.

 

Varian 500 MHz Spectrometer System

Features include:

            • 500 MHz ultra-shielded Oxford superconducting magnet

            • Varian Unity Inova 500 MHz console with gradient and 3-channel amplifiers

            • Room temperature HCN and H-X probes with Z-axis gradient capability

            • Multidimensional homo- and heteronuclear (1H/13C/15N) NMR data acquisition

            • Zymark SMS100 autosampler capable of running up to 100 NMR samples

            • VNMRJ software for automated data acquisition and processing