Structural and Dynamics Studies of Lipids by Solid-State NMR

Abstract

All living creatures are made of cells. One cellular component, the membrane, plays a crucial role in almost all cellular activities. Biomembranes are made of a bilayer of lipids, in which are associated intrinsic and extrinsic proteins. Solid-state NMR has proven to be a very valuable technique to investigate the structure and dynamics of lipid membranes and the technique has developed along two main directions. The first class involves the study of powder spectra. In particular, deuterium and phosphorus NMR methods have been widely used in the last three decades for the study of the structure and dynamics of biological membranes. The second class of techniques involves the restoration of high resolution spectra using the magic-angle spinning technique or samples oriented in the magnetic field. This article presents an overview of the solid-state NMR techniques commonly used to investigate the structure and dynamics of lipid bilayers. Keywords: lipids; membranes; bilayers; structure; dynamics; deuterium; phosphorus