Natural abundance C REDOR coupled to a singly N-labeled nucleus: simultaneous determination of interatomic distances in crystalline ammonium [N] -glutamate monohydrate

REDOR technique was applied to natural abundance ¹³C nuclei coupled to a singly labeled ¹⁵N nucleus to determine the ¹³C, ¹⁵N interatomic distances simultaneously in crystalline ammonium ¹⁵N] -glutamate monohydrate (1). Consequently, the interatomic C–N distances between ¹⁵N and ¹³C=O, ¹³C_α, ¹³C_β, ¹³C_γ, and ¹³C_δ carbon nuclei for 1 were determined with a precision of ±0.15 Å, after the experimental conditions such as the location of samples in the rotor, length of π pulse etc. were carefully optimized. ¹³C-REDOR factors for three spin system, (ΔS/S₀)_CN1N2, and the sum of two isolated 2-spin system, (ΔS/S₀)^*=(ΔS/S₀)_CN1+(ΔS/S₀)_CN2, were further evaluated by the REDOR measurements on isotopically diluted 1 in a controlled manner. Subsequently, the intra- and intermolecular C–N distances were separated by searching the minima in the contour map of root mean square deviation (RMSD) between the theoretically and experimentally obtained (ΔS/S₀)^* values against two interatomic distances, r_C–N1 and r_C–N2. When the intramolecular C–N distance (r_C–N1) of the particular carbon nucleus is substantially shorter than the intermolecular one (r_C–N2), C–N distances within a single molecule were obtained with an accuracy of ±0.06 Å as in the cases of C=O, C_α and C_β carbon nuclei. C–N distances between the molecule in question and the nearest neighboring molecules can be also obtained, although accuracy was lower. On the contrary, it was difficult to determine the interatomic distances in the same molecule when the intermolecular dipolar contribution is larger than the intramolecular one as in the case of C_δ carbon nucleus.