David Bradley Science Writer writes the monthly news column for three sections of the SpectroscopyNOW.com site - Spectral Lines, Resonants and X-factors.
The latest issue is now online:
The
ability to follow the flow of a fluid through a porous material would be of
great utility for oil exploration, in monitoring natural and synthetic
structures, and in tracking industrial flow processes. Now, thanks to US
researchers who had the clever idea of using two NMR radio coils instead of one,
it is possible to study fluid flow using remote magnetic resonance imaging with
time-of-flight detection.
Elucidating
the structure of drug polymorphs, variations on the crystal theme for a
particular compound, is important to drug development. Different polymorphs have
different physical properties and so may be absorbed at different rates by the
body, have alternative formulation needs, and, perhaps most importantly, offer
different patent opportunities for the manufacturers. The bottleneck in
structural elucidation lies in the dearth of single-crystal data available.
NMR
has allowed German researchers to investigate the cooperative binding of DNA to
an important protein involved in suppressing tumour growth in our bodies. The
binding of p53 to DNA is regulated by protein-protein interactions through a
double salt bridge, they have found. The finding suggests that this salt bridge
might be crucial to protecting us from certain types of cancer and fixing it
when it malfunctions could provide a new avenue for anticancer drug research.
Issue 23
Quick as you like
Thomas
Szyperski of the University of Buffalo, New York, went out on a limb in 2003
when he suggested that high-throughput NMR could be used to reveal protein
structures much faster and at lower cost, than conventional NMR approaches. Now,
he and colleagues in the field of genomic science have determined eight protein
structures in just one to three weeks, bearing out his earlier claim. The same
structures might have taken routine NMR spectroscopists several months to solve.
Szyperski's patented protein protocol could ultimately improve medical
diagnostics and treatments.
NMR
can track the movement of a platinum complex during its reaction with an organic
compound as the metal atoms casually stroll around the reactant's carbon rings,
according to Milko van der Boom of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot,
Israel and colleagues. The direct observation of this "ring-walking" could have
implications for understanding the catalysis of organic transformations by
platinum and other metals.
Earthquakes resonate with magnetic theory
The
physics of magnetism could one day help seismologists predict the probable
timing of earthquakes, thanks to research by Spanish scientists.