NEWS AND UPDATES

December promises to be an exciting month for the UK NMR community. SNUG will host its annual Postgraduate Course in NMR, and we’ll wrap up the year with the NMRDG/BRSG Winter Meeting in London on December 12th and 13thwith an excellent list of speakers. Don’t forget to apply for the Connect NMR UK Training Mobility Grant to cover travel and accommodation expenses of these meetings!

And if that’s not enough to spark some holiday cheer, here’s how NMR reveals the goodness of Christmas. As everyone knows, no Christmas is complete without a roast, and in the UK, that means brussels sprouts! These cruciferous vegetables, part of the Brassicaceae family, are packed with antioxidants and bioactive compounds linked to several health benefits. A recent study used NMR to characterize the content of brassica species in sinapic acid derivatives, which may help regulate blood sugar and support cellular energy metabolism (Yamada S et al., 2024). NMR-based metabolomic studies have even identified biomarkers for cruciferous vegetable consumption, offering valuable insights for tracking dietary habits and studying these nutrient-rich veggies’ health benefits (McNamara AE et al., 2024; Edmands WMB et al., 2011).

So, whether it’s the NMR talks at the Winter Meeting, your love for brussels sprouts, or the festive holiday spirit, here’s hoping everyone feels the joy of the season. And, as one merry and curious MRI study showed, a “Christmas spirit network” activates areas in the brain linked to emotion, sensory experience, and spirituality—bringing out the joy and nostalgia of the holidays (Hougaard A et al., 2015).

Have a lovely season everyone and hope to see you in London.

NMRDG/BRSG Winter Meeting – Registrations closing soon! (registrations closing on the 2nd Dec): The NMRDG/BRSG Winter Meeting will be on the 12 -13 December 2024 at the RSC’s Burlington House in London. This event brings together a distinguished lineup of speakers and offers a prime opportunity to learn about cutting-edge NMR research in the UK. Please find the full program and registration link here.

Don’t Forget to apply for the Connect NMR UK Training Mobility Grant, we can support your travel and accommodation expenses.

Training Mobility Grant – As the current Connect NMR UK funding comes to an end on the 31st January 2025, we can only accept and support applications for events being held before this date.

NMR Community: Please get in touch with any ideas or thoughts about the network and how can we further support engaging our NMR community (anac@liverpool.ac.uk).

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

The paper “Site-directed cation ordering in chabazite-type AlxGa1-xPO4-34 frameworks revealed by NMR crystallography” is a result of a collaboration between teams from St Andrews (led by Professor Ashbrook and Dr Dawson) and Warwick (led by Professor Walton) and investigates the structural and cation distribution properties in a series of AlxGa1-xPO4-34 frameworks using NMR crystallography. This study is particularly significant as it examines how cations—aluminium (Al) and gallium (Ga)—organize themselves within a chabazite-type framework, a crystalline structure often employed for catalysis and molecular sieving applications due to its porous nature. By employing solid-state NMR and complementary density functional theory (DFT) calculations, the researchers discovered non-random cation distribution patterns: Al tends to occupy octahedral sites, while Ga prefers tetrahedral ones. This ordering contrasts with prior assumptions of random cation distribution and helps clarify how specific elemental arrangements can be tailored in similar porous frameworks.

The findings have impactful implications for materials science, particularly in the design of selective catalytic and adsorptive materials. Understanding the preferential site occupancy enhances control over framework stability, reactivity, and adsorption characteristics, potentially advancing the design of materials for energy storage, environmental applications, and industrial catalysis.

Dawson et al., Chem Sci 2024;15(12):4374-4385. doi: 10.1039/d3sc06924a

 

The study “Probing Assembly/Disassembly of Ordered Molecular Hydrogels” led by Professor Khimyak investigates the molecular and structural behaviour of hydrogels containing L-Phenylalanine (Phe) and NH₂-Phenylalanine (NH₂-Phe). The study examines how these molecules self-assemble into ordered fibrous networks in water, which are influenced by factors like cooling rates and concentration. A combination of solution-state and solid-state NMR was critical to obtain detailed molecular information on the structure and dynamics of different hydrogel materials with varying concentrations of Phe and NH₂-Phe.

The impact of this study is substantial for materials science and biomedicine, as it advances our understanding of how molecular-level modifications can control the assembly and mechanical properties of hydrogels. This insight is valuable for developing custom-tailored hydrogels that could potentially improve drug release profiles or support specific cell cultures, facilitating progress in personalized medicine and bioengineering applications​.

Ramalhete et al., Faraday Discuss 2024. doi: 10.1039/d4fd00081a

 

If you have recently published an NMR research focused paper, please share it with us. Just send us the link (and a figure you have!).

We can highlight it in our newsletter, and social media please get in contact!

UPCOMING EVENTS

CCPN upcoming Online workshops:

Analysis V2 to V3 Transition Workshop (online) 2 December 2024 13:00-16:00

SNUG 2024 postgraduate NMR course – 2 to 3 December – University of Edinburgh

NMRDG/BRSG Winter Meeting – 12 December 2024 10:00 – 13 December 2024 16:00 at the RSC’s Burlington House in London.

6th Reaction Monitoring Symposium – 28 January 2025 9:30-5:00 at the University of Bath

Frontiers of Magnetic Resonance / NMR Discussion Group Spring Meeting – 31 March 2025 10:00 to 1 April 2025 11:00 at Southampton , UK

Experimental Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Conference – JOINT ENC – ISMAR CONFERENCE – 6-10 April 2025 at the Asilomar Conference Center, 800 Asilomar Blvd, Pacific Grove, CA 93950

PANIC – Practical Applications of NMR in Industry Conference – 19-22 May 2025 at Rockville, Maryland at the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research (IBBR) Campus

Workshop – Paramagnetic NMR & DNP enhanced solid-state NMR – 19 – 23 May 2025 at the CRMN, Lyon.

EuroMAR2025 – 6-10 July 2025 at Oulu, Finland

2025 Alpine Conference on Magnetic Resonance in Solids – 14-18 September 2025 at Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, France

FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES

Please contact us if you have an open position you would like to announce in the Connect NMR UK newsletter/webpage.

FEATURED FACILITY 

The UCL hosts 3 NMR facilities, the UCL Division of Biosciences NMR Facility, the UCL Chemistry NMR Facility and the UCL School of Pharmacy NMR facility. In this issue of the Connect NMR UK Newsletter I am pleased to have Dr Nikita Harvey telling us about the capabilities and vision of the later.

The NMR facility at the UCL School of Pharmacy has been designed for a wide range of solution-state pharmaceutical and biological chemistry applications. Recently upgraded in 2022, the facility is equipped with:

  • A Bruker Avance Neo 600 MHz spectrometer equipped with a high-throughput SampleJet autosampler and QCI-F cryoprobe optimised for 1H and 19F sensitivity
  • A Bruker Avance Neo 400 MHz spectrometer with a SampleCase, dedicated to routine chemistry applications
  • A SamplePro Tube liquid handling robot for high-throughput NMR sample preparation

We are currently in the process of developing a 19F ligand-observed fragment library screening service for the identification of chemical probes for proteins. We have created 15 cocktails covering ~450 ligand fragments, which can be prepared with the protein of interest and analysed using a 1H-decoupled 19F 1D experiment and a 1H-decoupled perfect echo 19F T2 experiment to identify binding hits. Further experiments may be carried out with identified fragments of interest such as STD and Water-LOGSY to characterise binding further if desired. This will contribute towards Target 2035, a global movement to develop a pharmacological modulator for every protein in the human proteome by 2035.

 

Access to the facility is available to industry and academic users on an ad-hoc basis at TRAC-listed rates – please contact facility manager Dr Nikita Harvey at nikita.harvey@ucl.ac.uk to request instrument time or register interest in our screening service, or academic lead Dr Chris Waudby for collaborations.