Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Gradients for measuring diffusion

Translational diffusion, also known as Brownian motion, is the random motion of particles among the other components of a solution. The rate of diffusion is related to the size of the molecule so measuring this rate can provide an estimate of molecular weight and information on aggregation, or binding, at close to physiological conditions. NMR experiments have been devised to measure translational diffusion using a pair of gradient pulses separated by a delay. These Diffusion Ordered SpectroscopY, or DOSY1, experiments, are typically shown as 2D spectra with a horizontal 1H dimension and a vertical diffusion rate dimension.