Scalar coupling measurement

NMR is the experimental tool of choice to explore conformational properties, especially of flexible small molecules in solution [55-57], Interpretation of NMR-derived structural parameters in combination with molecular modeling usually offers a view of the accessible conformations to ligands. The most relevant structural parameters derived from NMR are interproton distances obtained from NOE or ROE experiments, dihedral angle restraints from 3J scalar coupling measurements and, recently, residual dipolar couplings (RDCs) [58],... 

As an example of the measurement of cross-correlated relaxation between CSA and dipolar couplings, we choose the J-resolved constant time experiment [30] (Fig. 7.26 a) that measures the cross-correlated relaxation of 1H,13C-dipolar coupling and 31P-chemical shift anisotropy to determine the phosphodiester backbone angles a and in RNA. Since 31P is not bound to NMR-active nuclei, NOE information for the backbone of RNA is sparse, and vicinal scalar coupling constants cannot be exploited. The cross-correlated relaxation rates can be obtained from the relative scaling (shown schematically in Fig. 7.19d) of the two submultiplet intensities derived from an H-coupled constant time spectrum of 13C,31P double- and zero-quantum coherence [DQC (double-quantum coherence) and ZQC (zero-quantum coherence), respectively]. These traces are shown in Fig. 7.26c. The desired cross-correlated relaxation rate can be extracted from the intensities of the cross peaks according to ... 

T2 measurements usually employ either Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill (CPMG) [7, 8] spin-echo pulse sequences or experiments that measure spin relaxation (Tlp) in the rotating frame. The time delay between successive 180° pulses in the CPMG pulse sequence is typically set to 1 ms or shorter to minimize the effects of evolution under the heteronuc-lear scalar coupling between 1H and 15N spins [3]. 

Since the discovery of the nuclear Overhauser effect (NOE, see previous section) [4, 5] and scalar coupling constants [36, 37] decades ago, NMR-derived structure calculations of biomolecules largely depended on the measurement of these two parameters [38]. Recently it became possible to use cross-correlated relaxation (CCR) to directly measure angles between bond vectors [39] (see also Chapt 7). In addition, residual dipolar couplings of weakly aligned molecules were discovered to measure the orientation of bond vectors relative to the alignment tensor (see Sect 16.5). Measurement of cross-correlated relaxation was described experimentally earlier for homonuclear cases [40, 41] and is widely used in solid-state NMR [42 14]. 

Cross-correlated dipolar relaxation can be measured between a variety of nuclei. The measurement requires two central nuclear spins, each of which is directly attached to a remote nuclear spin (Fig. 16.4). The central spin and its attached remote spin must be connected via a large scalar coupling, and the remote spin must be the primary source of dipolar relaxation for the central spin. The two central spins do not need to be scalar coupled, although the necessity to create multiple quantum coherence between them requires them to be close together in a scalar or dipolar coupled network. In practice, the central spins will be heteroatoms (e.g. 13C or 15N in isotopically enriched biomolecules), and the remote spins will be their directly attached protons. 

Bodenhausen ° developed a pattern-recognition programme (MARCO POLO) in order to extract coupling pathways in COSY spectra. He subsequently described a recursive deconvolution technique for the measurement of couplings, but this seems to offer more benefits to the measurement of scalar couplings in two-dimensional spectra than in one-dimensional spectra. 

Whilst scalar couplings are readily identified in two-dimensional spectra, their measurement from cross-peak multiplets poses special problems. 

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