Overview of biomolecular EPR spectroscopy

This brief anecdote should serve to illustrate that its extensively interdisciplinary character is not only a strength of bio-EPR but also its Achilles heel. When the production of significant results requires comparable input efforts from different disciplines, there is an increased chance for the occurrence of time-wasting misunderstandings and errors. A less anecdotic example is the claim—frequently found in physics texts—that sensitivity of an EPR spectrometer increases with increasing microwave frequency. Although this statement may in fact be true for very specific boundary conditions—for example, when sensitivity stands for absolute sensitivity of low-loss samples of very small dimensions—when applied in the EPR of biological systems it can easily lead to considerable loss of time and money and to frustration on the part of the life science researcher, because it is simply not true at all for (frozen) solutions of biomolecules. 

This book on bioEPR intends to avoid such misunderstandings from the start. The primary goal of a bioEPR spectroscopist is to contribute to an understanding of life at the molecular level. The theory and practice of the spectroscopy is selectively developed as a means to this goal. 

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