This award is for the acquisition of a cryogenic probe for a 600 MHz NMR spectrometer housed in the Magnetic Resonance Facility at the college. The cryogenic probe will afford a 3-4-fold enhancement in sensitivity compared with conventional triple-resonance probes. In addition, being "13C-enhanced", it will greatly improve capabilities for 13C direct detection with sensitivities comparable to dedicated 13C-detect probes, allowing additional experimental methodology for biomolecules to be developed and implemented. Further, the new salt-tolerant design will prevent a significant degradation of the sensitivity gain in high-salt conditions that are often necessary to stabilize biomolecules in solution. The availability of this probe will allow faster data acquisition and/or analysis of samples that cannot be produced at high concentrations. The probe will benefit a broad spectrum of research areas including (i) the development of novel NMR methodology to study biomolecular structure and dynamics, (ii) determination of structure-function relationships in flavoproteins, (iii) investigation of charge effects in ordered and disordered proteins and (iv) the elucidation of the molecular determinants of membrane protease function.
The City College of New York is a minority-serving institution. The availability of the cryogenic probe at the NMR facility will allow the training of a larger number of students (graduate and undergraduate) and postdoctoral researchers, including those belonging to communities that are underrepresented in the sciences. There are plans to develop an NMR workshop that would bridge the gap between theory and "hands-on" experimentation. This would be beneficial both for the college students and for the state's structural biology community in general.
