Dynamic Nuclear Polarization of Deuterated Proteins

For D's a jolly good fellow: Deuteration of proteins significantly increases the signal enhancements observed in dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) magic-angle spinning (MAS) NMR experiments. In 13C CP-MAS spectra an enhancement of 120 is observed for perdeuterated SH3 with an exchangeable proton ratio of 50 %, whereas the enhancement is only 31 for the fully protonated SH3. The direct 13C excitation of the perdeuterated sample increases the enhancement to 148.