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Updated: Aug 13, 2026

Atomic Scale Structural Studies of Macromolecular Assemblies by Solid-state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy
Published on: September 17, 2017
Static and magic angle spinning (31)P NMR spectroscopy of two natural plasma membranes
C Moreau1, M Le Floch, J Segalen
1Laboratoire de RMN en Biologie et Médecine (LRMBM), Faculté de Médecine, CS 34317, 35043, Rennes, France. celine.moreau@univ-rennes1.fr
Abstract:
Static and magic angle spinning (31)P NMR spectroscopy was used for the first time in natural plasma membranes from erythrocytes and skeletal muscle to study phospholipid arrangement and composition. Typical static powder-like spectra were obtained showing that phospholipids were in a bilayer arrangement. Magic angle spinning narrowed spectra into two components. The first one corresponded to phosphatidylcholine and the second one to the other phospholipids with intensities in agreement with the known phospholipid composition. These findings show that NMR data previously acquired using model membranes can be transposed to studies on phospholipids in their natural environment.
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