Nuclear magnetic resonance intermediate identification

Vervoort, J., et al. (1986). Identification of the true carbon-13 nuclear magnetic resonance spectrum of the stable intermediate II in bacterial luciferase. Biochemistry 25 8062-8067. 

Infrared (IR) spectroscopy was the first modern spectroscopic method which became available to chemists for use in the identification of the structure of organic compounds. Not only is IR spectroscopy useful in determining which functional groups are present in a molecule, but also with more careful analysis of the spectrum, additional structural details can be obtained. For example, it is possible to determine whether an alkene is cis or trans. With the advent of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, IR spectroscopy became used to a lesser extent in structural identification. This is because NMR spectra typically are more easily interpreted than are IR spectra. However, there was a renewed interest in IR spectroscopy in the late 1970s for the identification of highly unstable molecules. Concurrent with this renewed interest were advances in computational chemistry which allowed, for the first time, the actual computation of IR spectra of a molecular system with reasonable accuracy. This chapter describes how the confluence of a new experimental technique with that of improved computational methods led to a major advance in the structural identification of highly unstable molecules and reactive intermediates. 

If the objective is identification (qualitative analysis), it suffices to compare the spectrum of the analyte with that of a standard, both recorded in the same solvent and at an identical pH. This is not the main application of UV-Vis spectrophotometry as the best results in this context are provided by spectroscopic methods considered more effective for the study of the molecular structure of organic compounds (infrared, nuclear magnetic resonance, mass spectrometry, and X-ray diffraction). However, UV-Vis spectrophotometry is a source of relevant supplementary information that helps in the elucidation of molecular structures of drugs, impurities, metabolites, intermediate compounds of degradation, etc. 

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