Facilities

The Bio-NMR laboratory is well equipped to determine atomic resolution structures and to investigate dynamic features and intermolecular interactions of biological macromolecules. We have two major NMR spectrometers devoted to the task.

Enlarged view: Bruker Avance III 700 MHz spectrometer — Bruker Avance III 700 MHz spectrometer

The Bruker Avance III 700 MHz spectrometer is equipped with a triple resonance {1H,13C,15N} TCI 700 CryoProbe, suitable for most experiments in biomolecular structure and dynamics research.

Enlarged view: Bruker Avance III HD 600 MHz spectrometer — Bruker Avance III HD 600 MHz spectrometer

The Bruker Avance III HD 600 MHz spectrometer is equipped with a triple resonance {1H,13C,15N} TCI 600 CryoProbe.

Additional probeheads for this spectrometer are available:

Triple resonance {1H,13C,15N} TXI 600 CryoProbe
Dual resonance {13C,1H} DUL 600 CryoProbe
Room temperature triple resonance {1H,13C,15N} TXI 600 probehead
Room temperature broadband {X,1H} BBO 600 probehead for heteronuclear NMR

The spectrometer is synchronized with a laser, which is triggered from an NMR pulse sequence and fires continuous or pulsed laser light of different wavelength. This is allowing for example to perform chemically induced dynamic nuclear polarization experiments which are using radicals to significantly enhance signals from solvent exposed aromatic protein residues.

Besides typical experiments in structural biology this system, in combination with MIC 600 probehead and additional high-current gradient unit, can also be used for MRI micro-imaging of living cells.

The Bio-NMR laboratory is equipped to do routine molecular biology work including cloning, protein expression in shaker flasks and in a fermenter, and protein purification including FPLC chromatography which separates components of a mixture based on their different properties.

One of the primary objective of the Bio-NMR laboratory research is to understand the conformational switches of proteins associated with amyloid diseases and trans-membrane signaling and the lab is well equipped to study biophysical properties of the protein aggregation. A dynamic light scattering instrument (Wyatt) can quickly estimate the size distribution of protein aggregates.

The instrument measures the time-dependent fluctuations in the scattered light which are then used to calculate diffusion properties of the molecule in the solvent, and the particles' hydrodynamic radii.

The static light scattering instrument (Wyatt) measures the angular dependence of the amount of light scattered from the sample and in combination with HPLC (Agilan) and refracting index detector (?) can reveal masses of the oligomers as well as masses of protein/lipid complexes

Enlarged view: Circular Dichroism spectrometer (Jasco) — Circular Dichroism spectrometer (Jasco)

The Circular Dichroism spectrometr (Jasco) is used to study protein folding by measuring the differences between absorbtion of left and right polarized light which due to the fact that a protein is a chiral molecule provides a fingerprint of the protein's secondary structure.