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Updated: Jul 19, 2026

Atomic Scale Structural Studies of Macromolecular Assemblies by Solid-state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy
Published on: September 17, 2017
Sensitivity and resolution enhancement in solid-state NMR spectroscopy of bicelles
Sergey V Dvinskikh1, Kazutoshi Yamamoto, Ulrich H N Dürr
1Biophysics Research Division and Department of Chemistry, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1055, USA.
Abstract:
Magnetically aligned bicelles are becoming attractive model membranes to investigate the structure, dynamics, geometry, and interaction of membrane-associated peptides and proteins using solution- and solid-state NMR experiments. Recent studies have shown that bicelles are more suitable than mechanically aligned bilayers for multidimensional solid-state NMR experiments. In this work, we describe experimental aspects of the natural abundance (13)C and (14)N NMR spectroscopy of DMPC/DHPC bicelles. In particular, approaches to enhance the sensitivity and resolution and to quantify radio-frequency heating effects are presented. Sensitivity of (13)C detection using single pulse excitation, conventional cross-polarization (CP), ramp-CP, and NOE techniques are compared. Our results suggest that the proton decoupling efficiency of the FLOPSY pulse sequence is better than that of continuous wave decoupling, TPPM, SPINAL, and WALTZ sequences. A simple method of monitoring the water proton chemical shift is demonstrated for the measurement of sample temperature and calibration of the radio-frequency-induced heating in the sample. The possibility of using (14)N experiments on bicelles is also discussed.
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