Two-Dimensional (2D) NMR Methods

Appendix A Proton-Detected Heteronuclear and Multidimensional NMR

Christian Griesinger, Harald Schwalbe, Jürgen Schleucher, and Michael Sattler

This chapter describes proton-detected (also called inverse) heteronuclear two- and three-dimensional NMR spectroscopy. These techniques make it possible to answer biologically interesting questions and to derive solution structures of proteins, nucleic acids, glycoproteins, and other biomolecules with high precision.

The goal of the chapter is to give an overview of the bewildering variety of techniques used for heteronuclear correlation spectroscopy, compare the various basic building blocks, and show the advantages and disadvantages of those techniques. Three-dimensional techniques in particular can be used to overcome assignment problems and to measure homonuclear and heteronuclear ⁿJ-coupling constants that could not be derived using conventional 2D NMR experiments.

This contribution is focused on methods rather than on applications, which are the topic of other chapters. It is split into five sections of varying length and complexity. Familiarity with the product operator formalism will be helpful, [1–3] although a short introduction will be given. Product operator notations of the state of the spin system at important points in the pulse sequence will be presented as well as a more general description of the transfer pathway in the course of the particular experiments.

A.1 Introduction

A.1.1 Sensitivity

The sensitivity of ...