Comprehensive Upgrade of a Shared Campus Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Facility

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This award will fund a cryoprobe for state-of-the-art nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) studies of biological macromolecules and natural products. The cryoprobe will be used at the UC Davis NMR Facility by researchers in the fields of chemistry, biochemistry, and structural biology. Specific examples include studies of the molecular structure and dynamics of proteins, nucleic acids, carbohydrates, lipids, and natural products from a variety of sources. The high sensitivity cryoprobe dramatically increases experimental sensitivity, reduces experimental run times, and lowers the minimum amount of sample needed for study, thus opening new areas of productive research. The cryoprobe package consists of a cryogenically cooled NMR probe, a mounting platform, associated cryogenic pumps and tubing, and a cryogenically cooled preamplifier. The probe will be a triple resonance type, with proton observation and both carbon and nitrogen decoupling channels. A Z-field gradient coil is also part of the probe. The probe sensitivity is approximately two to four times that of non-cryogenic probes for the same sample volume and concentration. This increase translates into reductions in run time of approximately four to sixteen fold. Such a drastic savings in run time effectively provides another entire spectrometer at a fraction of the cost. The probe will be capable of multi-resonance, multi-dimensional solution studies of biological macromolecules and natural products. The instrumentation will become part of the UCD NMR Facility. The Facility is utilized annually by over 40 faculty members (in approximately 20 departments of the Davis campus). These research groups have approximately 140 students and 50 postdoctoral fellows, of whom approximately 40 individuals are regular hands-on users of the instrumentation. The NMR spectrometers are an ancillary part of 14 classes annually with an average total enrollment of over 100 students. The spectrometers also serve as a state of the art resource for student and faculty recruitment. The cryoprobe will thus make a significant contribution to the research and educational infrastructure at the University of California, Davis.