News

New console of the 800 MHz Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectometer

The update of the 800 MHz Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometer at the CCiTUB NMR Unit has been completed. The radio frequency equipment's system had become obsolete, so a state-of-the-art Avance Neo console has replaced it. The new console allows better control of the equipment. It consists of four channels (1H, 13C, 15N, 2H) with transmission and reception capacity, so that each channel can act as an independent spectrometer, achieving great flexibility in the configuration of the instrument. This configuration also allows the performance of "multi-acquisition" experiments, that is, simultaneous acquisition of different experiments.

The new console technology allows the measurement of fast NMR experiments (fast-NMR) such as those using NUS (Non-Uniform-Sampling) technology. By acquiring only a fraction of the points that would be acquired in a conventional experiment, the same results are obtained, achieving considerable timesavings. For many long experiments, the experimental measurement time can be reduced by an order of magnitude. This methodology opens the doors to the measure of new types of experiments that could not be carried out or were very expensive with the classical methods.

These new methods are crucial for the study of the structure and dynamics of biomolecules. They are currently essential in the study of a specific type of protein, such as intrinsically disordered proteins (IDP), which play a key role in many essential biological processes and are involved in the regulation of many diseases.

The NMR Unit of the CCiTUB is located in the Diagonal Campus-Knowledge Portal and has three locations within the aforementioned campus: in the Faculty of Pharmacy, in the Faculty of Chemistry and the PCB. It is in the PCB, the location of the NMR Unit since the end of 1999, where the 800Mz spectrometer that has been the object of the renovation is located.

The NMRI facilities of the CCiTUB, located in the Cluster building of the Parc Científic de Barcelona, have been qualified as ICTS since 2000 and this qualification has been renewed now becoming part of the Network of MRI Laboratories of Biomolecules, to the which have joined two new nodes: Manuel Rico NMR Laboratory of the State Agency for Higher Council of Scientific Research - CSIC and the NMR Laboratory of Euskadi of the Association Center for Cooperative Research in Biosciences - CIC bioGUNE. This network is included in the field of Health Sciences and Biotechnology.

The MRI laboratory of the CCiTUB, has as main objective the realization of very high field NMR experiments for the study of the structure and dynamics of complex molecules of biological interest and to give advice to all companies and researchers on the applications of the MRI in this field. Their teams contribute to research in various areas, such as chemistry, molecular biology, cell and genetics, food science and technology, pharmacy and biotechnology, among others.