Funds are requested to match an institutional commitment for purchase of a complete, multi-nuclear 500 MHz NMR spectrometer system. The projects described by the major users include multinuclear studies of erythrocytes and proteins; protein, peptide and organic compound structural studies; NMR kinetics; drug structures and conformation studies; enzyme-substrate complexes; and electron transfer complexes. This is an urgent request to fill a critical void in NMR resources at Washington State University. There is no high-field NMR at WSU. The most modern piece of NMR instrumentation is a ten-year old NT200 spectrometer whose electronics and pulse programmer are so outdated that simple two-dimensional experiments cannot be performed. In fact, inversion-recovery experiments cannot even be performed. This situation is indeed a desperate one for NIH funded Principal Investigators who rely on NMR, or who wish to expand their research programs using NMR. The present situation forces faculty to put off NMR work, to establish collaborations with NMR groups elsewhere, or to travel extensively in order to personally obtain NMR data. In the past year WSU faculty have had to obtain NMR spectra at the University of Idaho, Tufts University, University of Arizona, Arizona State University, University of New Mexico, U.C. Davis, and Purdue University. This type of effort is expensive, both in the PIs time contribution and the instrument operation costs, extremely inefficient for those with sustained research programs involving NMR, and cannot be a sustainable effort for faculty during the academic year. In addition to matching funds for this spectrometer WSU has committed over $195,000 for renovation of 3000 sq. ft. of space that will constitute the WSU NMR Center, which is a main part of the WSU legislative initiative in Molecular Sciences.
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