Suppression of radiation damping for high precision quantitative NMR.

True quantitative analysis of concentrated samples by (1)H NMR is made very difficult by Radiation Damping. A novel NMR sequence (inspired by the WET NMR sequence and by Outer Volume Saturation methods) is therefore proposed to suppress this phenomenon by reducing the spatial area and consequently the number of spins contributing to the signal detected. The size of the detected volume can be easily chosen in a large range and line shape distortions are avoided thanks to a uniform signal suppression of the outer volume. Composition of a mixture can as a result be determined with very high accuracy (precision and trueness) at the per mille level whatever the concentrations and without hardware modification.

Internal Referencing for ¹³C Position-Specific Isotope Analysis Measured by NMR Spectrometry.

The intramolecular (13)C composition of a molecule retains evidence relevant to its (bio)synthetic history and can provide valuable information in numerous fields ranging from biochemistry to environmental sciences. Isotope ratio monitoring by (13)C NMR spectrometry (irm-(13)C NMR) is a generic method that offers the potential to conduct (13)C position-specific isotope analysis with a precision better than 1‰. Until now, determining absolute values also required measurement of the global (or bulk) (13)C composition (δ(13)Cg) by mass spectrometry. In a radical new approach, it is shown that an internal isotopic chemical reference for irm-(13)C NMR can be used instead. The strategy uses (1)H NMR to quantify both the number of moles of the reference and of the studied compound present in the NMR tube. Thus, the sample preparation protocol is greatly simplified, bypassing the previous requirement for precise purity and mass determination. The key to accurate results is suppressing the effect of radiation damping in (1)H NMR which produces signal distortion and alters quantification. The methodology, applied to vanillin with dimethylsulfone as an internal standard, has an equivalent accuracy (<1‰) to that of the conventional approach. Hence, it was possible to clearly identify vanillin from different origins based on the (13)C isotopic profiles.

Fractionation in position-specific isotope composition during vaporization of environmental pollutants measured with isotope ratio monitoring by ¹³C nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometry.

Isotopic fractionation of pollutants in terrestrial or aqueous environments is a well-recognized means by which to track different processes during remediation. As a complement to the common practice of measuring the change in isotope ratio for the whole molecule using isotope ratio monitoring by mass spectrometry (irm-MS), position-specific isotope analysis (PSIA) can provide further information that can be exploited to investigate source and remediation of soil and water pollutants. Position-specific fractionation originates from either degradative or partitioning processes. We show that isotope ratio monitoring by (13)C NMR (irm-(13)C NMR) spectrometry can be effectively applied to methyl tert-butylether, toluene, ethanol and trichloroethene to obtain this position-specific data for partitioning. It is found that each compound exhibits characteristic position-specific isotope fractionation patterns, and that these are modulated by the type of evaporative process occurring. Such data should help refine models of how remediation is taking place, hence back-tracking to identify pollutant sources.

Nonstatistical 13C distribution during carbon transfer from glucose to ethanol during fermentation is determined by the catabolic pathway exploited.

During the anaerobic fermentation of glucose to ethanol, the three micro-organisms Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Zymomonas mobilis, and Leuconostoc mesenteroides exploit, respectively, the Embden-Meyerhof-Parnas, the Entner-Doudoroff, and the reductive pentose phosphate pathways. Thus, the atoms incorporated into ethanol do not have the same affiliation to the atomic positions in glucose. The isotopic fractionation occurring in each pathway at both the methylene and methyl positions of ethanol has been investigated by isotopic quantitative (13)C NMR spectrometry with the aim of observing whether an isotope redistribution characteristic of the enzymes active in each pathway can be measured. First, it is found that each pathway has a unique isotope redistribution signature. Second, for the methylene group, a significant apparent kinetic isotope effect is only found in the reductive pentose phosphate pathway. Third, the apparent kinetic isotope effects related to the methyl group are more pronounced than for the methylene group. These findings can (i) be related to known kinetic isotope effects of some of the enzymes concerned and (ii) give indicators as to which steps in the pathways are likely to be influencing the final isotopic composition in the ethanol.

Conditions to obtain precise and true measurements of the intramolecular 13C distribution in organic molecules by isotopic 13C nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometry.

Intramolecular (13)C composition gives access to new information on the (bio) synthetic history of a given molecule. Isotopic (13)C NMR spectrometry provides a general tool for measuring the position-specific (13)C content. As an emerging technique, some aspects of its performance are not yet fully delineated. This paper reports on (i) the conditions required to obtain satisfactory trueness and precision for the determination of the internal (13)C distribution, and (ii) an approach to determining the "absolute" position-specific (13)C content. In relation to (i), a precision of <1% can be obtained whatever the molecule on any spectrometer, once quantitative conditions are met, in particular appropriate proton decoupling efficiency. This performance is a prerequisite to the measurement of isotope fractionation either on the transformed or residual compound when a chemical reaction or process is being studied. The study of the trueness has revealed that the response of the spectrometer depends on the (13)C frequency range of the studied molecule, i.e. the chemical shift range. The "absolute value" and, therefore, the trueness of the (13)C NMR measurements has been assessed on acetic acid and by comparison to the results obtained on the fragments from COOH and CH3 by isotopic mass spectrometry coupled to a pyrolysis device (GC-Py-irm-MS), this technique being the reference method for acetic acid. Of the two NMR spectrometers used in this work, one gave values that corresponded to those obtained by GC-Py-irm-MS (thus, the "true" value) while the other showed a bias, which was dependent to the range covered by the resonance frequencies of the molecule. Therefore, the former can be used directly for studying isotope affiliations, while the latter can only be used directly for comparative data, for example in authenticity studies, but can also be used to obtain the true values by applying appropriate correction factors. The present study assesses several key protocol steps required to enable the determination of position-specific (13)C content by isotopic (13)C NMR, irrespective of the NMR spectrometer: parameters to be adjusted, performance test using [1,2-(13)C2]acetic acid, generation of correction factors.