Metabolomics is the systematic identification and quantification of all metabolites in an organism or biological sample. NMR has been used as a major application tool in plant metabolomics such as quality control, chemotaxonomy, and analysis of genetically modified plants. Herbal medicines are the important therapeutics and are used to manage common diseases such as cold, inflammation, pain, heart diseases, liver cirrhosis, diabetes and central nerve system diseases. Herb plants include various kinds of species such as geranium, mint, and thyme and so on and contain different kinds of metabolites. We performed NMR-based metabolomics study on the seven different species of herb plants using $^1H$ NMR experiments and OPLS-DA to understand the correlation between the classification of herb plants and their metabolite contents. This study showed clear metabolic discrimination among various herb plants. This metabolmics study found several diagnostic NMR signals which are able to be used as bio-markers for identification of the specific herb plants among various species. Clear metabolic discrimination of herb plants suggests three chemotaxonomic groups of herb species.

Membrane proteins play a essential role in the biological systems and it is not easy to handle a membrane protein for its structural study. Solid-state NMR (ssNMR) can be a good tool to investigate the structures and dynamics of membrane proteins. In ssNMR, Magic Angle Spinning (MAS) and Cross Polarization (CP) can be utilized to reduce the line-broadening, leading to high resolution and sensitivity in the spectrum. ssNMR, if combined with other spectroscopic methods, can provide us a enough knowledge on structures and dynamics of membrane proteins in biological condition.

The spin-lattice relaxation times, $T_1$, and spin-spin relaxation times, $T_2$, of the $^{27}Al$ and $^{87}Rb$ nuclei in $RbAl(CrO_4)_2{\cdot}2H_2O$ crystals were investigated. The presence of only one resonance line for the $^{27}Al$ nuclei indicates that the results in a dynamical averaging of the crystal electric field that produces a cubic symmetry field. The changes in the temperature dependence of $T_1$ are related to variations in the symmetry of the octahedra of water molecules surrounding $Al^+$ and $Rb^+$. The $T_1$ values for the $^{27}Al$ and $^{87}Rb$ nuclei are different due to differences in the local environments of these ions. We also compared these $^{27}Al$ and $^{87}Rb$ NMR results with those obtained for $RbAl(CrO_4)_2{\cdot}2H_2O$ crystals. The relaxation mechanisms of $RbAl(XO_4)_2{\cdot}nH_2O$ (X=Cr and S) crystals are characterized by completely different NMR behaviors.

The effects of the sample viscosity and volume on the convective flows induced by temperature gradient in PGSE-NMR self-diffusion measurements at high temperature have been investigated. The experimental results showed that the viscosity of the liquid sample strongly affects the magnitude of the convective flows as well as the diffusion coefficient itself. It was also found that the convective flows increase as the sample volume increase.

Three different derivatives were obtained in the synthesis of cobalt-binding BLM-A2 and characterized by NMR and Mass spectrometry. It was found that Component 1 is Co(II)($2H_2O$)(BLM-A2), component 2 is Co(III)($OOH^-$)(BLM-A2) and component 3 is Co(III)($H_2O$)($OH^-$)(BLM-A2), respectively. Component 2 and 3 were interestingly dominated when CoBLM-A2 complex was synthesized under basic condition. In this experiment, it was revealed newly that the brown form (component 1) was 6-coordinated structure composed with not 5 ligands but 4 ligands from BLM-A2 and with $2H_2O$ as the axial ligands. The component 3 exhibiting a novel ligand configuration is found, and the structure of component 3 was observed to be very similar to that of component 1 in the kind of their ligands but one of the axial ligand is $OH^-$ instead of $H_2O$. These ligand configurations are different from the green form (component 2) exhibiting 6-coordinate structure composed of 5 ligands from BLM-A2 and one ligand of $OOH^-$, being consistent with former studies.

Human melanocortin-4 receptor (hMC4R) among MC-Rs, expressed in the brain, is in charge of the control on energy homeostasis and food intake. The structure and function of human MC4R have been studied to understand their essential function and roles. To investigate the structure and function, it is necessary to prepare sufficient amounts of proteins. However, their expression and purification is demanding and time-consuming due to their innate insoluble and toxic properties. The heterozygous mutations of hMC4R, exchange of Asp 90 to Asn located in second transmembrane, cause severe obesity in human. To obtain purified hMC4R wt-TM2 for structural studies, it was first over-expressed and purified by fast protein liquid chromatography (FPLC) and then solution NMR studies were performed to get high-resolution spectra. In here, we established optimized purification scheme to get more purified target peptide.

SAV2228 has an OB (Oligomer-Binding)-motif which is frequently used for nucleic acid recognition. To characterize the activity of translation initiation factor-1 (IF-1) from Staphylococcus aureus, SAV2228 was expressed and purified in Escherichia coli. We acquired 3D NMR spectra showing well dispersed and homogeneous signals which allow us to assign 94.4% of all $^1HN$, $^{15}N$, $^{13}C{\alpha}$, $^{13}C{\beta}$ and $^{13}CO$ resonances. We could predict a secondary structure of SAV2228 using TALOS and CSI from NMR data. SAV2228 was consisted of one ${\alpha}$-helix and five ${\beta}$-sheets. The predicted secondary structure, ${\beta}-{\beta}-{\beta}-{\alpha}-{\beta}-{\beta}$, was similar to other bacterial IF-1, but it was not completely same to the eukaryotic one. Assigned NMR peaks and secondary structre prediction can be used for the study on interaction with nucleic acid in the future.

The prokaryotic molecular chaperone Hsp33 achieves its holdase activity upon response to oxidative stress particularly at elevated temperature. Despite many structural studies of Hsp33, which were conducted mainly by X-ray crystallography, the actual structures of the Hsp33 in solution remains controversial. Thus, we have initiated NMR study of the reduced, inactive Hsp33 monomer and backbone NMR assignments were obtained in the present study. Based on a series of triple resonance spectra measured on a triply isotope-[$^2H/^{13}C/^{15}N$]-labeled protein, sequence-specific assignments of the backbone amide signals observed in the 2D-[$^1H/^{15}N$]TROSY spectrum could be completed up to more than 96%. However, even considering the small portion of non-assigned resonances due to the lack of sequential connectivity, we confirmed that the total number of observed signals was quite smaller than that expected from the number of amino acid residues in Hsp33. Thus, it is postulated that peculiar dynamic properties would be involved in the solution structure of the inactive Hsp33 monomer. We expect that the present assignment data would eventually provide the most fundamental and important data for the progressing studies on the 3-dimensional structure and molecular dynamics of Hsp33, which are critical for understanding its activation process.