Investment in NMR equipment has potential to improve material and molecular insights

Global efforts to map the genes of humans and other creatures may have revealed the basic building blocks of living organisms, but without better knowledge of the way the millions of macromolecules within cells assemble and interact, scientists are still some way from fully understanding how life works.

In an effort to improve the understanding of how these individual components come together to create the molecular machines that carry out basic biological functions, researchers at Oxford University are undertaking a project to upgrade the institution’s ultra-high field 950MHz NMR spectroscopy system.

The upgrade is part of a wider £20m investment in very high and ultra-high field NMR spectroscopy by EPSRC, alongside the Biotechnology and Biosciences Research Council (BBSRC), the Medical Research Council (MRC) and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

NMR spectroscopy is used to determine the molecular structure of a wide range of materials. The technique can provide detailed information on the topology, dynamics and three-dimensional structure of these materials, including biological components in solution.