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We have investigated the properties of a series of dinitroxides as polarizing agents for SS NMR/DNP applications. Our results clearly establish that an orthogonal relative orientation of electron gtensors is a crucial requirement to obtain high enhancement DNP factors. Moreover, the ratio of the proton Larmor frequency over the e−–e−dipolar coupling (ωH/ωD) influences the efficiency of the cross effect (CE) mechanism, thus the 〈Ree〉 distance between the unpaired electrons must be adapted to ωH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP) experiments transfer polarization from electron spins to nuclear spins with microwave irradiation of the electron spins for enhanced sensitivity in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Design and testing of a spectrometer for magic angle spinning (MAS) DNP experiments at 263 GHz microwave frequency, 400 MHz 1H frequency is described. Microwaves are generated by a novel continuous-wave gyrotron, transmitted to the NMR probe viaa transmission line, and irradiated on a 3.2 mm rotor for MAS DNP experiments. DNP signal enhancements of up to 80 have been measured at 95 K on urea and proline in water–glycerol with the biradical polarizing agent TOTAPOL. We characterize the experimental parameters affecting the DNP efficiency: the magnetic field dependence, temperature dependence and polarization build-up times, microwave power dependence, sample heating effects, and spinning frequency dependence of the DNP signal enhancement. Stable system operation, including DNP performance, is also demonstrated over a 36 h period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perdeuteration of biological macromolecules for magic angle spinning solid-state NMR spectroscopy can yield high-resolution 2H–13C correlation spectra and the method is therefore of great interest for the structural biology community. Here we demonstrate that the combination of sample deuteration and dynamic nuclear polarization yields resolved 2H–13C correlation spectra with a signal enhancement of ≥ 700 compared to a spectrum recorded with microwaves off and otherwise identical conditions. To our knowledge, this is the first time that 2H-DNP has been employed to enhance MAS-NMR spectra of a biologically relevant system. The DNP process is studied using several polarizing agents and the technique is applied to obtain 2H–13C correlation spectra of U-[2H, 13C] proline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution addresses four potential misconceptions associated with high-resolution dynamic nuclear polarization/magic angle spinning (DNP/MAS) experiments. First, spectral resolution is not generally compromised at the cryogenic temperatures at which DNP experiments are performed. As we demonstrate at a modest field of 9 T (380 MHz 1H), 1 ppm linewidths are observed in DNP/MAS spectra of a membrane protein in its native lipid bilayer, and <0.4 ppm linewidths are reported in a crystalline peptide at 85 K. Second, we address the concerns about paramagnetic broadening in DNP/MAS spectra of proteins by demonstrating that the exogenous radical polarizing agents utilized for DNP are distributed in the sample in such a manner as to avoid paramagnetic broadening and thus maintain full spectral resolution. Third, the enhanced polarization is not localized around the polarizing agent, but rather is effectively and uniformly dispersed throughout the sample, even in the case of membrane proteins. Fourth, the distribution of polarization from the electron spins mediated viaspin diffusion between 1H–1H strongly dipolar coupled spins is so rapid that shorter magnetization recovery periods between signal averaging transients can be utilized in DNP/MAS experiments than in typical experiments performed at ambient temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) utilizes the inherently larger polarization of electrons to enhance the sensitivity of conventional solid-state NMR experiments at low temperature. Recent advances in instrumentation development and sample preparation have transformed this field and have opened up new opportunities for its application to biological systems. Here, we present DNP-enhanced 13C–13C and 15N–13C correlation experiments on GNNQQNY nanocrystals and amyloid fibrils acquired at 9.4 T and 100 K and demonstrate that DNP can be used to obtain assignments and site-specific structural information very efficiently. We investigate the influence of temperature on the resolution, molecular conformation, structural integrity and dynamics in these two systems. In addition, we assess the low-temperature performance of two commonly used solid-state NMR experiments, proton-driven spin diffusion (PDSD) and transferred echo double resonance (TEDOR), and discuss their potential as tools for measurement of structurally relevant distances at low temperature in combination with DNP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]