This proposal from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology requests our grant for a period of five years to support a Naional NMR Facility for Biomolecular Research located at the Francis Bitter National Magnet Laboratory. The overall mission of the Facility is to: (1) develop, operate and maintain five state-of-the-art superconducting NMR spectrometer systems; (2) to provide these advanced NMR facilities for collaborative and visitors' research projects; (3) to continue to carry out in-house basic and applied research to enhance the capabilities of the experimental NMR facilities and to delineate new biomedical applications; (4) to continue to disseminate to the scientific community the results of our research and to continue the on-going transfer of technology to industry; (5) to continue to train resident staff, collaborators and visitors in the application of new NMR methodology to the solution of biomedical problems. The complement of advanced instruments will allow users to pursue a broad program of research on NMR methodology, macromolecules and their complexes, cells, tissues, and small animals. It will be possible to probe all of the complexities of biological NMR in both the liquid and solid states. Proposed user activities in these areas are described in detail in this proposal. The major new technologies to be introduced are: (1) a high performance spectrometer of our own design and construction utilizing a 9.4 T/8.9 cm magnet for studies of metabolism in living systems; (2) a capability for performing photo-CIDNP studies on the high resolution 500 MHz spectrometer; (3) a unique high resolution, multinuclear, 600 MHz spectrometer employing a persistent mode 14 T/5 cm magnet of our own design and construction; (4) a distributed data processing network which will link the five operational spectrometers to a powerfully configured VAX-11/730 computer system.
Our aim i s to establish a comprehensive capability in high field analytical NMR for studying the structure and function of the diverse materials important in biological processes.
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