Aug. 3, 2021 – To reach the top of two million dollar state-of-the-art devices, scientists climb spiraling stairs around the structures – each the size of two oversized stacked refrigerators.
The National Science Foundation’s $ 40 million investment is intended in part to advance health research and drug development.
The spectrometers work in a similar way to MRT scanners, the magnetic resonance tomographs, with which images are recorded to enable a view into the interior of the human body. But instead of photographing people, the new machines will photograph molecules, explains Jeffrey Hoch, PhD, of the Department of Molecular Biology and Biophysics at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine at Farmington.
Nuclear imaging will make it possible to study molecules atom by atom and check chemical reactions under different conditions. The larger the magnet in the machine, the finer the details can be examined.
The technology will help researchers understand battery components, nanomaterials and surface coatings, and open up myriad avenues for research, some of which can still be imagined.
In less than 3 years, the University of Georgia at Athens and the University of Wisconsin at Madison will each have a state-of-the-art 1.1 gigahertz spectrometer and will join the UConn School of Medicine to work on the three pillars of the Network for Advanced Nuclear. to form magnetic resonance. Researchers in Georgia will study mixtures of substances, and those in Wisconsin will study solids.
To use a spectrometer, someone climbs a staircase wrapped around the machine and drops small sample tubes into the top. An “air elevator” then carries them down into the magnet, where molecules can be isolated and examined, explains Dr. Engin Serpersu, Program Director at the National Science Foundation (NSF).
USA lags behind Europe
There are only a handful of spectrometers, each of which can cost as much as $ 30 million, in the United States, and outside researchers rarely have access. The addition of these two new machines will greatly improve research, says Steven Ellis, PhD, who is also the program director at NSF.
That’s good news because the US is lagging Europe with ordering, installing and using this technology, he says. In fact, this delay was noted in a 2013 report by the National Research Council that emphasized the need for ultra-high field nuclear imaging.
If the failure to keep pace with advances in commercial technology continues, “the United States is likely to lose its leadership role as scientific problems of greater complexity and importance are solved elsewhere,” the report said.
“I can not [overstate] how important it is to make these tools available to more users, “says Ellis.” If you want to know how a protein works, you really want to know how it’s folded, where all the atoms are, and how things interact with it . “
For the first time, the technology will be available to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students, primarily universities, minority institutions, and historically black colleges and universities, and “any type of institution that may can not afford “. their own system but could prepare samples and use the data, “he explains.” It democratizes the technology. “
The NSF award goes beyond the spectrometer; it extends to the cyber infrastructure, which includes the processing, storage and sharing of data. It also includes developing protocols so that people can use the knowledge bases to become experts.
The high-field instruments speed up data collection, which is important because biological samples are not always stable, Serpersu emphasizes. And researchers can see how fast a single atom is moving and “you can look at thousands of them at once” with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) or isolate some to study one at a time.
Possible evidence of Alzheimer’s and COVID
The technology could improve the study of the way proteins aggregate to cause neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s, Serpersu says.
It could also advance research on antivirals for diseases like COVID-19, says Ellis.
“If you want to disrupt spike protein binding, understanding the structure of it and the structure of the receptor on the cell to which it binds helps. Understanding these receptor structures can be very difficult because they don’t crystallize well. Magnetic resonance is a better approach, “he says.
The Network for Advanced Nuclear Magnetic Resonance is starting with the three currently designated sites, but other centers are expected to join the network and share resources and data, says Ellis.
The $ 40 million award does not cover the long-term costs of the program, so researchers must receive grants to cover the costs when they reserve time with the spectrometers.
“The whole idea is to enable them to be more competitive by working on modern instruments and to be successful in funding competitions,” says Ellis.
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Jeffrey Hoch, PhD, of the Department of Molecular Biology and Biophysics at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Farmington.
Engin Serpersu, PhD, Program Director at NSF
Steven Ellis, PhD, Program Director at NSF
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