In-Cell NMR Spectroscopy

摘要

NMR spectroscopy combines two features that make it unique among all biophysical methods for the investigation of biological macromolecules.The first feature is its ability to provide information about molecules under physiological or at least "near-physiological" conditions.This ability has led to the development of entire new fields such as in vivo NMR spectroscopy,which focuses on the observation of metabolites and metal ions in systems ranging from suspensions of bacteria and other cells to entire perfused organs,and magnetic resonance imaging,which can provide information about entire organisms.The second distinctive feature is the sensitivity of the chemical shift of an NMR-active nucleus to changes in its chemical environment.This ability has made NMR spectroscopy an excellent tool for studying the interaction of biological macromolecules with binding partners,ranging from other macromolecules to small ligands and medically important drugs.Recently,we and others have started to combine these two advantages of NMR spectroscopy to obtain information about the conformation and dynamics of biological macromolecules inside living cells.