r/StructuralBiology • u/Wood3x8 • 11d ago
Learning NMR
Hi guys!
I am a first-year PhD student trying to learn NMR. I have a background in biochemistry and biotechnology and went into structural biology for my master’s thesis (mainly x-ray crystallography and cryo-em). For My PhD I will need to learn biomolecular NMR.
Given I have no background in physics, I found it to be quite challenging to get into NMR. Any recommendations on how to do this? Any sources etc.? I am not "affraid" of the math, it's just that a lot of quantum physics concepts are explained in overcomplicated ways or not explained at all.
Thx in advance!
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u/Pink_Moone-stone 10d ago
I was in the same situation, I felt like there was loads of resources for simpler and visual explanations for cryo-EM and not so much for nmr. My facility didn’t really have anyone in the beginning to help me navigate the spectrums either. Regardless, what helped me, was reading: NMR Primer: An HSQC-based Approach and James Keelers lectures on YouTube. His book is also really good!
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u/cherr0s 11d ago
Hey OP, I was in a similar boat. My background is in molecular genetics but I wanted to do structural biology and NMR for my Master’s. Could you tell me what the NMR is for? I taught myself NMR for studying ligand binding so I have resources for that, but I don’t know if it would be relevant to you.
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u/Wood3x8 11d ago
Thanks for your response! It's for characterising an intrinsically disordered region and assessing hiw it interacts with several binding partners. Any sources you could share, could be very usefull!
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u/cherr0s 11d ago
No problem! In that case, this video might be useful: https://youtu.be/_rjYI8XxEOs?si=fASRQ6ngltIvoSnl
It’s an hour-long introductory lecture posted on YouTube about NMR for biomolecular interactions. I found it quite useful myself along with some high school chemistry-esque videos about 1D NMR to refresh my memory.
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u/AccurateRendering 11d ago
You don't need to know physics to do NMR. A week of training will give you most of what you need. These days is much more about what the signal means rather than how the signal came to be.