“The Role of Pulsed-Field Gradients in Modern NMR Pulse Sequence Design” described in a new NMR book

Our Publications

Pulsed-Field Gradients (PFGs) play an important role in the development and understanding of modern NMR methods. With the ultimate goal of constructing robust pulse sequences that create high-quality NMR spectra with minimum set-up, PFGs are utilized to achieve an exclusive selection of a specific coherence transfer pathway as well as purging all kinds of undesired magnetization. PFG reduces the number of needed phase cycle steps to a bare minimum, allowing for accelerated NMR data acquisition in shorter spectrometer times. The potential and diversity of several PFG-based NMR elements are presented, as well as instances of their implementation in time-efficient NMR solutions. Practical aspects such as NMR data collecting needs and the attainment of pure in-phase absorption lineshapes are discussed for the most useful NMR experiments.

ISBN13: 9781839164002
Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry
Published: 17/05/2023

(book) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/9781839168062
(Chapter free) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/BK9781839168062-00001

NMR summer school 2023

NMR Events & Courses, , , ,

Jaca, 19th-24th June 2023

The Specialised Group of NMR of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (GERMN, RSEQ) organizes the XV Manuel Rico NMR Summer School in Jaca from 19th-23th June 2023.

This well-established bi-annual summer course is aimed at PhD students, postdocs, technical staff of NMR facilities and, in general, to researchers from academy and industry interested in deepening their understanding of NMR. The course covers theoretical aspects, state-of-the-art methods and applications in fields as diverse as Molecular Chemistry, Materials, Biology, Medicine, and Pharmaceutical Industry, including solution-state, and solid-state NMR techniques, as well as MRI techniques.

Silvia Lope, SeRMN staff, will be teaching a class in “Magnetic Resonance Imaging”.

Start of Registration: March 1st, 2023

End of Registration: April 31st, 2023

For detailed information please visit their webpage https://germn.rseq.org/nmr-summer-school/

Dr. Teodor Parella included in the Stanford University’s Top 2% Scientists (Career Impact) (1960-2022) 

News from the SeRMN

The world’s top 2% of most important scientists across all fields have been updated in a new list issued by Stanford University (1). Dr. Teodor Parella, head of the SeRMN-UAB, appears in this Stanford list that includes 3030 spanish researchers from different disciplines, around 300 spanish chemists and 81 researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

(1) https://elsevier.digitalcommonsdata.com/datasets/btchxktzyw/5

Dr. Parella has also been ranked #6 at UAB, #268 in Spain and #7687 in the world in the field of Chemistry, according to Research.com, a leading academic platform for researchers, that has just released the 2023 Edition of the Ranking of Best Scientists. The ranking is based on D-index (Discipline H-index) metric, which only includes papers and citation values for an examined discipline. The ranking includes only leading scientists with D-index of at least 40 for academic publications made in the area of Chemistry.

The Chemistry ranking for UAB is available here: https://research.com/university/chemistry/autonomous-university-of-barcelona
The full Chemistry ranking for Spain is available here: https://research.com/scientists-rankings/chemistry/es
The full world Chemistry ranking is available here: https://research.com/scientists-rankings/chemistry

Full list of UAB researchers for all disciplines: https://research.com/university/autonomous-university-of-barcelona

Molecules with memory at room temperature

Methods & Applications

A fruitful collaboration between the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ) along with other international institutions involving the SeRMN-UAB has allowed the demonstration that a molecular magnetic memory near room temperature is a reality. A new way of storing information has come to light and possesses a potential technological impact. Molecular bits are already here.

Reference: Moneo-Corcuera, A., Nieto-Castro, D., Cirera, J., Gómez, V., Sanjosé-Orduna, J., Casadevall, C., Molnár, G., Bousseksou, A., Parella, T., Martínez-Agudo, J.M., Lloret-Fillol, J., Pérez-Temprano, M.H., Ruiz, E. & Galán-Mascarós, J.R. Molecular memory near room temperature in an iron polyanionic complex. Chem, 9, 373-393 (2023).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chempr.2022.09.025

More info here and in Chemistry world.

XIV Manuel Rico NMR School

NMR Events & Courses, ,

Jaca, 19th-24th June 2022

The Specialised Group of NMR of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (GERMN, RSEQ) organizes the XIV Manuel Rico NMR Summer School in Jaca from 19th-24th June 2022.

This well-established bi-annual summer course is aimed at PhD students, postdocs, technical staff of NMR facilities and, in general, to researchers from academy and industry interested in deepening their understanding of NMR. The course covers theoretical aspects, state-of-the-art methods and applications in fields as diverse as Molecular Chemistry, Materials, Biology, Medicine, and Pharmaceutical Industry, including solution-state, and solid-state NMR techniques, as well as MRI techniques.

Silvia Lope, SeRMN staff, will be teaching a class in “Magnetic Resonance Imaging”.

End of pre-registration April 12th, 2022

Start of Registration: April 30th, 2022

End of Registration: May 17th, 2022

For detailed information please visit their webpage https://rmnjaca22.iqfr.csic.es/

13th Workshop on Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy and Imaging (MRI/MRS) Applied to Laboratory Animals

NMR Events & Courses, , , ,
Workshop dates:May 24th – 27th, 2022
Registration deadline:May 13th, 2022
Registration:download the registration form and email it to
Capacity:Workshop limited to 4 participants (first come, first served)
Contact person:Silvia Lope-Piedrafita, PhD ()

This course combines a comprehensive series of lectures on the technology of Magnetic resonance spectroscopy and imaging (MRS/MRI) with hands-on laboratory sessions to provide practical demonstrations of key concepts and procedures for preclinical studies.

Whether you are considering MRI as a research tool in your lab or just would like to learn more about MRI, this workshop addresses practical aspects of experimental MRI with laboratory animals and provide valuable hands-on experience on a 7 Tesla Bruker BioSpec spectrometer.

See the workshop brochure for more information, or contact via email.

SeRMN contribution to SMASH Small Molecule NMR Conference

News from the SeRMN, NMR Events & Courses, Our Research, , , , , , , ,

Kumar Motiram-Corral is presenting at SMASH 2021 Conference a talk entitled In situ Enantiospecific Detection of Multiple Metabolites in Mixtures using NMR Spectroscopy, related to some of our recent research work. The presentation will be 1st of September in the section “Unveiling the Unknown – New Methods in Structure Elucidation“.

L. T. Kuhn, K. Motiram-Corral, T. J. Athersuch, T. Parella, M. Pérez-Trujillo, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 59 (2020) 23615.

Metabolomics and transcriptomics to decipher molecular mechanisms underlying ectomycorrhizal root colonization of an oak tree

Methods & Applications, Our Publications, , , , ,

M. Sebastiana, A. Gargallo-Garriga, J. Sardans, M. Pérez-Trujillo, F. Monteiro, A. Figueiredo, M. Maia, R. Nascimento, M. Sousa Silva, A. N. Ferreira, C. Cordeiro, A. P. Marques, L. Sousa, R. Malhó & J. Peñuelas

Scientific Reports volume 11, Article number: 8576 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-87886-5

Mycorrhizas are known to have a positive impact on plant growth and ability to resist major biotic and abiotic stresses. However, the metabolic alterations underlying mycorrhizal symbiosis are still understudied. By using metabolomics and transcriptomics approaches, cork oak roots colonized by the ectomycorrhizal fungus Pisolithus tinctorius were compared with non-colonized roots. Results from this global metabolomics analysis suggest decreases in root metabolites which are common components of exudates, and in compounds related to root external protective layers which could facilitate plant-fungal contact and enhance symbiosis. Root metabolic pathways involved in defense against stress were induced in ectomycorrhizal roots that could be involved in a plant mechanism to avoid uncontrolled growth of the fungal symbiont in the root apoplast. Several of the identified symbiosis-specific metabolites, such as GABA, may help to understand how ectomycorrhizal fungi such as P. tinctorius benefit their host plants.

SeRMN contribution at EUROMAR 2021 Conference

Methods & Applications, News from the SeRMN, NMR Events & Courses, Our Publications, Our Research, , , , , , ,

Some of our recent research work was presented at the European NMR meeting Euromar 2021 that was going to take place at Portoroz (Slovenia), but which was finally virtual from the 5th to the 8th of July 2021.

· Míriam Pérez-Trujillo presented the talk In situ Enantiospecific Detection of Multiple Metabolites in Mixtures using NMR Spectroscopy in the “Metabolomics” session. In this talk our last advances in enantiodifferentiation using NMR were shown and discussed.

To date, the enantiospecific analysis of mixtures necessarily requires prior separation of the individual components. The simultaneous enantiospecific detection of multiple chiral molecules in a mixture represents a major challenge, which would lead to a significantly better understanding of the underlying biological processes; e.g. via enantiospecifically analyzing metabolites in their native environment. Here, we report on the first in situ enantiospecific detection of a thirty-nine-component mixture. As a proof of concept, eighteen essential amino acids (AAs) at physiological concentrations were simultaneously enantiospecifically detected using NMR spectroscopy and a chiral solvating agent. This work represents a first step towards the simultaneous multicomponent enantiospecific analysis of complex mixtures, a capability that will have substantial impact on metabolism studies, metabolic phenotyping, chemical reaction monitoring, and many other fields where complex mixtures containing chiral molecules require efficient characterization.

L. T. Kuhn, K. Motiram-Corral, T. J. Athersuch, T. Parella, M. Pérez-Trujillo, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 59 (2020) 23615.

Yeast Pichia pastoris for bulk chemicals production

Methods & Applications, Our Publications, , , ,

Benchmarking recombinant Pichiapastoris for 3-hydroxypropionic acid production from glycerol

A. Fina, G. Coelho Brêda, M. Pérez-Trujillo, D. M. Guimarães Freire, R. Volcan Almeida, J. Albiol, P. Ferrer

Microb. Biotechnol. (2021) 14(4), 1671– 1682. https://doi.org/10.1111/1751-7915.13833

The use of the methylotrophic yeast Pichia pastoris (Komagataella phaffi) to produce heterologous proteins has been largely reported. However, investigations addressing the potential of this yeast to produce bulk chemicals are still scarce. In this study, we have studied the use of P. pastoris as a cell factory to produce the commodity chemical 3-hydroxypropionic acid (3-HP) from glycerol. 3-HP is a chemical platform which can be converted into acrylic acid and to other alternatives to petroleum-based products. To this end, the mcr gene from Chloroflexus aurantiacus was introduced into P. pastoris. This single modification allowed the production of 3-HP from glycerol through the malonyl-CoA pathway. Found results benchmark P. pastoris as a promising platform to produce bulk chemicals for the revalorization of crude glycerol and, in particular, to produce 3-HP.