The overall goals of the research are to develop methods for describing the structure and dynamics of biopolymers that are integral parts of supramolecular structures and to apply these methods to the study of the filamentous bacteriophages. A direct consequence of the research support by this grant is that solid- state NMR spectroscopy is now on the verge of joining x-ray diffraction and solution NMR spectroscopy as a third independent method for determining the structures of proteins at atomic resolution, including proteins in nucleoprotein or membrane-protein complexes. These systems are difficult or impossible to study by x-ray diffraction, because of its requirements for single crystal samples, or solution NMR spectroscopy, because of its requirements for low molecular weight and rapidly reorienting samples. The emphasis of the research is on proteins, however these methods are applicable to nucleic acids, and are related to methods appropriate for lipids and carbohydrates. Most of the current research utilizes oriented systems in the structural studies; this approach will continue, however several methods for obtaining structural information form spectroscopy is highly effective at describing the intramolecular motions of proteins and will be used to analyze both backbone and sidechain motions over the range of timescales from 102 to 1010 Hz.
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