Metabolomics is the study which detects the changes of metabolites level. Metabolomics is a terminal view of the biological system. The end products of the metabolism, metabolites, reflect the responses to external environment. Therefore metabolomics gives the additional information about understanding the metabolic pathways. These metabolites can be used as biomarkers that indicate the disease or external stresses such as exposure to toxicant. Many kinds of biological samples are used in metabolomics, for example, cell, tissue, and bio fluids. NMR spectroscopy is one of the tools of metabolomics. NMR data are analyzed by multivariate statistical analysis and target profiling technique. Recently, NMR-based metabolomics is a growing field in various studies such as disease diagnosis, forensic science, and toxicity assessment.

Rapid advances of computational power and method have made it practical to apply the time-consuming calculations with all-atom force fields and sophisticated potential energies into refining NMR structure. Added to the all-atom force field, generalized-Born implicit solvent model (GBIS) contributes substantially to improving the qualities of the resulting NMR structures. GBIS approximates the effects that explicit solvents bring about even with fairly reduced computational times. Although GBIS is employed in the final stage of NMR structure calculation with experimental restraints, the effects by GBIS on structures have been reported notable. However, the detailed effect is little studied in a quantitative way. In this study, we report GBIS refinements of ubiquitin and GB1 structures by six GBIS models of AMBER package with experimental distance and backbone torsion angle restraints. Of GBIS models tested, the calculations with igb=7 option generated the closest structures to those determined by X-ray both in ubiquitin and GB1 from the viewpoints of root-mean-square deviations. Those with igb=5 yielded the second best results. Our data suggest that the degrees of improvements vary under different GBIS models and the proper selection of GBIS model can lead to better results.

The temperature dependences of the NMR spectrum and the spin-lattice relaxation times in $KH_2PO_4$ were investigated via single-crystal NMR and MAS NMR. The stretched-exponential relaxation that occurred because of the distribution of correlation times was indicative of the degree of the distribution of the double-well potential on the hydrogen bond. The behaviors responsible for the strong temperature dependences of the $^1H$ and $^{31}P$ spin-lattice relaxation times in the rotating frame $T_{1{\rho}}$ in $KH_2PO_4$ are likely related to the reorientational motion of the hydrogen-bond geometry and the $PO_4$ tetrahedral distortion.

The structural characteristics of 4-coordinate $BO_4$ [B(1)] and 3-coordinate $BO_3$ [B(2)] groups in $BiB_3O_6$ were studied by $^{11}B$ magic angle spinning (MAS) and single-crystal nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. The spin-lattice relaxation time in the laboratory frame, $T_1$, for $^{11}B$ decreased slowly with increasing temperature, whereas the spin-lattice relaxation times in the rotating frame, $T_{1{\rho}}$, for B(1) and B(2), which differed from $T_1$, were nearly constant. Further, $T_{1{\rho}}$ for B(1) and B(2) showed very similar trends, although the $T_{1{\rho}}$ value of B(2) was shorter than that of B(1). The 3-coordinate $BO_3$ and 4-coordinate $BO_4$ were distinguished by $^{11}B$ MAS NMR spectrum and $T_{1{\rho}}$.

Immortalization-upregulated protein-1 (IMUP-1) genes have been cloned and are known to be involved in SV40-mediated immortalization. IMUP-1 gene is highly expressed in various cancer cell lines and tumors, suggesting the possibility that they might be involved in tumorigenicity. Previously, there were several problems for overexpression of IMUP-1 in bacterial expression systems including low solubility and aggregation due to unstructured property. To investigate the structural properties, it is necessary to obtain lots of pure and soluble proteins. Accordingly, the co-expression systems of bacterial chaperone proteins, GroEL-GroES, were used to increase solubility of IMUP-1. From the analysis of NMR and CD experiment data, it is suggested that the protein adopt typical the random coil properties in solution.

For a case study of suspected paraquat intoxication, we developed a simple and rapid method of $^1H$ qNMR to determine the mili-molar amount of paraquat in postmortem blood samples. There were no interfering signals from endogenous compounds in the chemical shift of paraquat and diquat (internal standard). The amount of sample used ranged from 0.25 mM to 10.0 mM. Diquat, which has similar physicochemical properties with paraquat, was chosen as an internal standard. The NMR experimental conditions, relaxation delay time and CPMG spin-echo pulse sequence were optimized. The developed method was validated in terms of specificity, accuracy, precision, matrix effect, recovery, limit of detection (LOD), and low limit of quantification (LLOQ). The proposed qNMR method provided a simple and rapid assay for the identification and quantification of the quaternary ammonium herbicide, "paraquat" in postmortem blood samples. This method was tested by using the blood from the heart of a man who was intoxicated with paraquat. In this particular case, the level of paraquat was 1.07 mM in the blood. For the determination of quaternary ammonium herbicides, qNMR could also be used to provide a better understanding of the currently available techniques.

Four new cyclic peroxide compounds (1~4) were isolated from the marine sponge Plakortis simplex. Their structures including relative stereochemistry were determined by MS and NMR analysis. All compounds, a side carbon chain with 10 carbons, were very unstable. After transformation into methyl ester analogues, the structure determination was conducted. Compounds 1a and 2a are stereoisomers, assigned as $3S^*$, $4S^*$, $6R^*$ and $3R^*$, $4S^*$, $6R^*$, respectively. Similarly, compounds 3a and 4a, replaced the methoxy group with an aliphatic methyl, are also stereoisomers. Compounds 1a and 2a exhibited the strong antifungal effect against the fungus Candida albicans.

SAV0506 is an 87 residue hypothetical protein from Staphylococcus aureus strain Mu50 and also predicted to have similar function to ribosome associated heat shock protein, Hsp 15. Hsp15 is thought to be involved in the repair mechanism of erroneously produced 50S ribosome subunit. In this report, we present the sequence specific backbone resonance assignment of SAV0506. About 82.5% of all resonances could be assigned unambiguously. By analyzing deviations of the $C{\alpha}$ and $C{\beta}$ chemical shift values, we could predict the secondary structure of SAV0506. This study is an essential step towards the structural characterization of SAV0506.

BldD, a developmental transcription factor from Streptomyces coelicolor, is a homodimeric, DNA-binding protein with 167 amino acids in each subunit. Each monomer consists of two structurally distinct domains, the N-terminal domain (BldD-NTD) responsible for DNA-binding and dimerization and the C-terminal domain (BldD-CTD). In contrast to the BldD-NTD, of which crystal structure has been solved, the BldD-CTD has been characterized neither in structure nor in function. Thus, in terms of structural genomics, structural study of the BldD-CTD has been conducted in solution, and in the present work, mainchain NMR assignments of the recombinant BldD-CTD (residues 80-167 of BldD) could be achieved by a series of heteronuclear multidimensional NMR experiments on a [$^{13}C/^{15}N$]-enriched protein sample. Finally, the secondary structure prediction by CSI and TALOS+ analysis using the assigned chemical shifts data identified a ${\beta}-{\alpha}-{\alpha}-{\beta}-{\alpha}-{\alpha}-{\alpha}$ topology of the domain. The results will provide the most fundamental data for more detailed approach to the atomic structure of the BldD-CTD, which would be essential for entire understanding of the molecular function of BldD.