Residual Dipolar Couplings (RDCs) in Organic Structure Determination

After the huge impact that residual dipolar couplings (RDCs) have had on the structure determination of biological macromolecules by NMR spectroscopy, their utility in the structure determination of small/medium‐sized organic compounds is more and more recognised. This microreview will provide a short overview on how to introduce the anisotropic environment necessary to measure RDCs, the corresponding measurement methods and the applications for the determination of the relative configurations and the assignment of diastereotopic moieties. Their application to rigid compounds will be described, as will their very promising application to more flexible compounds, which is an area in which RDCs are expected to yield information that is not accessible by any other NMR spectroscopic means. (© Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 69451 Weinheim, Germany, 2008)