Investigations of metal–organic frameworks are presented. This substance class is of interest for applications in gas storage (hydrogen, methane), separation, catalysis, and sensor technology. The properties of the material depend on the mobility of alkyl or alkyloxy side chains. We have determined that the side-chain methylene groups move highly anisotropically with a relatively short correlation time. Furthermore, we could improve the analysis procedure for the experiment used here.

Deuterium metabolic imaging (DMI) is a novel method to obtain images of dynamic metabolism in the living human brain. While DMI is generally simple and robust, small signals from deuterated skull lipids can distort the metabolic information within the brain. Here, we use MRI-based information on brain and skull locations to remove lipid signals from DMI data. With an average 90 % lipid removal, DMI is used to generate distinct and artifact-free metabolic maps on patients with brain tumors.

Protons (¹H) are useful reporters of protein structure and dynamics in solid-state NMR. However, ¹H abundance is detrimental to the resolution of NMR spectra. Substituting ¹H by deuterons has been an efficient strategy to improve spectral quality, but when the crucial backbone amide sites are not protonated, much information is loss. We propose a method to completely protonate the amide sites, while maintaining high-resolution information, which partially also extends to backbone alpha-¹H.

We have written a programming library for biological NMR, a commonly used research method. Its use simplifies (makes faster and less error-prone) development of new research methods. We demonstrate that it allows for consolidation of several experimental methods into one file without adding complexity. We hope that it will be of use for other groups developing NMR experiments.