Syndecan-4 cytoplasmic domain was tested to confirm the interactions with the bilayer membrane using $^{31}P$ solid-state NMR measurements. Syndecan-4 was known as a coreceptor with integrins in the cell adhesion. The syndecan-4 V region is not understood of its functional roles and tested its ability of the interaction with multilamellar vesicles. The $^{31}P$ powder pattern was dramatically changed and showed isotropic peak which imply the bilayer membrane changed its topology to the micelle-like structure. Especially, phosphatidylcholine membrane was affected this effect more than phosphatidylethanolamine membrane.

The spectral data were collected from the two 600 MHz spectrometers from the two major manufacturers, Broker and Varian. The samples were prepared to create standard curves for quantitative measurements of metabolite concentrations. Instead of employing one-dimensional $^1H$ experiments, the two-dimensional $^1H-^{13}C$ HSQC experiments were performed for better separation of resonances. For some resonances, the high salt condition hindered the linear correlation between the intensity and actual metabolite concentration. Excluding overlapped ones, most resonances showed good linearity. Although the Varian spectrometer showed better linearity, both spectrometers were able to generate acceptable standard curves. From this data, we could identify resonances that could be used to better quantify the concentrations of the particular metabolites. With these standard curves, the quantitative measurements of the metabolites from the real samples will be facilitated.

The NMR detection of methyl groups is of keen interest because they provide the long-range distance information required to establish global folds of high molecular weight proteins. Using longitudinal $^1H$ relaxation optimization, we achieve a gain in sensitivity of approximately 1.6-fold in the methyl-TROSY and its NOESY experiments for the 38 kDa protein mitogen activated protein kinase p38 in its fully protonated and $^{13}C$ and $^{15}N$ labeled state.

HP (2-20), a 19-residue peptide derived from the N-terminus of Helicobacter pylori Ribosomal Protein L1, has antimicrobial activity but is not cytotoxic to human erythrocytes. Previously, we have synthesized several analogue peptides to investigate the effects of substitutions on the structure and antimicrobial activity. Substitution of $Gln^{16}$ and $Asp^{18}$ with Trp (Anal 3) caused a dramatic increase in bacterial and fungal lytic activities. In this study, analogue peptides were synthesized to investigate the effects of substitution of Gin and Asp with Phe (Anal 6) or Tyr (Anal 7) in HP (2-20) on its structure and antimicrobial activity. Substitution of Gin and Asp with hydrophobic aromatic residues at position 16 and 18 of HP (2-20) caused increase in antibiotic activity without hemolytic effect. Substitution of Gin and Asp with Trp and Try increased antibiotic activity of HP (220) twice more compared to substitution with Phe. The tertiary structures of Anal 6 and Anal 7 in SDS micelles has been investigated using NMR spectroscopy. The structures revealed that substitutions of the aromatic residues at C-terminus resulted in longer and well defined alpha-helix and improved their antibacterial activities

The two correlation times previously obtained in our coupled $^{13}C$ relaxation measurement for the methyl group in 2,6-dichlorotoluene may be used as a criterion for evaluating the reorientation dynamics of an internal rotor. We numerically tested an extended diffusion model and the Smoluchowski diffusion equation to see how the rotational inertial effect and jump character contribute to the internal correlation time ratio of the internal rotor. We also analytically solved the general jump model with three different rate constants in a sixfold symmetric potential barrier. By assuming that the internal rotation of the methyl group in 2,6-dichlorotoluene can be described in terms of jumps among sixfold harmonic potential wells, we can conclude that the jump model satisfactorily reproduce the experimental data and the rate for sixfold jump is at least 1.53 times as great as that of a threefold jump.

SWIRM domain, a core domain of SRG3 is well conserved in SW13, RSC8, and MOIRA family proteins. To understand structural basis for cellular functions of the SWIRM domain, we have initiated biochemical and structural studies on SWIRM domain and mutants using gelfiltration chromatography, circular dichroism and NMR spectroscopy. The structural properties of the mutant SWIRM domains (K34A and M75A) have been characterized, showing that the structures of both wild-type and mutant proteins are a-helical conformation. The data conclude that mutations at interaction sites of its binding partner protein do not affect its secondary and tertiary structure.