This award provides partial support for acquisition of an 800 MHz Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometer for a group of 16 investigators. The instrument will be placed in a new center for structural biology in Baltimore along with a six-year old 600 MHz NMR; both instruments will be available for use by faculty and researchers of the University of Maryland and of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Center. The request for NSF support was submitted through an joint program of the NSF and the NIH that allows both agencies to support the purchase of very expensive research instruments that will be shared by three or more independent users. Thus, in addition to funds provided by NSF through this award, partial support for the purchase is being provided by the Shared Instrumentation Grant program of the NIH. In addition to the support provided by federal sources, the University will provide approximately $1 million of its own funds to purchase the instrument. The use of NMR for study of the structure and behavior of proteins and other large molecules has rapidly expanded in recent years as the availability of instruments capable of operating at high frequencies and field strengths has increased, and techniques for their use have been perfected. Only at the highest frequencies can instruments resolve the minute differences in the NMR signals of each atom in a large protein or nucleic acid. The minute differences allow researchers to locate the relative positions of each atom with the precision needed to establish structure at the atomic level. The users of this instrument will explore varied topics, all involving the structure and dynamics of large proteins or complexes of several proteins that require use of a very high field instrument of the type to be purchased.
