High-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance applied to biophysics and molecular biology: highlights and challenges

The development and success of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) methods in biological research depend on high-field superconducting magnets with outstanding homogeneity and excellent long term stability. In biological and biomedical research NMR provides a means for studying crucial questions at a molecular level, including three-dimensional structures at atomic resolution, dynamics and folding as well as a drug discovery and drug design. Today, NMR with biological macromolecules in solution is one of the principal experimental techniques of structural biology, despite the fact that very large molecules cannot readily be investigated. With NMR methodological and biochemical advances this size limit could be extended several times.