Serial Polarization Transfer by Combination of Cross-Relaxation and Rotational Resonance for Sensitivity-Enhanced...

Methods which induce site-specificity and sensitivity enhancement in solid-state magic-angle spinning NMR spectroscopy become more important for structural biology due to the increasing size of molecules under investigation. Recently, several strategies have been developed to increase site specificity and thus reduce signal overlap. Under dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) for NMR signal enhancement, it is possible to use cross-relaxation transfer induced by select dynamic groups within the molecules which is exploited by SCREAM-DNP (Specific Cross Relaxation Enhancement by Active Motions under DNP). Here, we present an approach where we additionally reintroduce the homonuclear dipolar coupling with rotational resonance (R² ) during SCREAM-DNP to further boost the selectivity of the experiment. Detailed analysis of the polarization buildup dynamics of ¹³ C-methyl polarization source and ¹³ C-carbonyl target in 2-¹³ C-ethyl 1-¹³ C-acetate provides information about the sought-after and spurious transfer pathways. We show that dipolar-recoupled transfer rates greatly exceed the DNP buildup dynamics in our model system, indicating that significantly larger distances can be selectively and efficiently hyperpolarized.