Wednesday, March 9, 2016 - 7:00pm

The great strength of NMR spectroscopy is that it can determine, non-invasively and at atomic resolution, the chemistry, structure, dynamics and overall architecture of samples in solid, liquid or even gaseous forms; for these reasons it plays a central role in structural biology and medical imaging. The small resonant energies underlying NMR are both its strength and its weakness as a spectroscopic technique: the small energies make the approach non-destructive, but they also make it difficult to distinguish the characteristic polarization (or signal) from thermal noise. In my talk I will discuss the application of solid state NMR techniques to understanding two complex systems: how amphiphilic peptides distinguish lipid species in pulmonary surfactant and the role of protein assembly in bacterial adhesion of biofilm formation. I will also describe the techniques we are developing to enhance NMR sensitivity, including progress in dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) approaches, the construction of high sensitivity NMR probes, and the development of ssNMR approaches to obtain high resolution information while filtering out signals from specific biomolecules in complex assemblies.

Speaker: 

Prof Joanna Long

Institution: 

U of Florida

Location: 

NS2 1201