Volume 35 Number 20	Edmonton, Canada	June 12, 1998
http://www.ualberta.ca/~publicas/folio

Anne McLellan, federal justice minister and attorney general, places a sample DNA in an NMR machine.

Researchers who last week celebrated the symbolic groundbreaking of the new $5.467 million National High Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Centre, dubbed NANUC, see it as a sign of good things to come for research scientists in Canada.

The new facility, to be built at the southeast corner of the Heritage Medical Building, is a cooperative effort between provincial and federal governments, other Canadian universities and researchers.

Bruce Lix, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer technician, says the cooperative spirit is "tangible evidence of government reinvesting in research. It's a good indication for Canadian science," he said. "I think it buoys the hope for some."

The most important feature of NANUC is the 800 MHz NMRs that will be at its heart. The 800 MHz is the highest field strength available in the world, and while there are other 800s in Canada, this is the first in Western Canada and the first to be opened to researchers and industry across Canada through electronic links.

"A lot of what industry will be buying is not just the technology, but the expertise on campus," says Lix. "In an ideal world, we'd like to make enough off the industries to make it available completely free of charge for university researchers."

So what exactly can the 800 MHz NMR do? It allows researchers to look very closely at the molecular level. "It's a tool that fits into what's happening in the world of science right now," says Lix. In the human genome project, for instance, researchers are discovering hundreds of new proteins a week. The challenge is to find out what they do. "In this instance, it's a case of function follows form," says Lix. Once researchers can see a 3D image of the protein they can begin working on ways to either block it or replicate it. Lix likens it to closely examining a lock and key. "Once you know what the key looks like, you can make a duplicate. It's allowing us to look for the design of little molecular keys and alter the functions of the protein."

The advantage of the bigger machine is that it allows researchers to look at bigger things. At the molecular level, there's a lot of complexity and overlap, "you can't tell that one signal belongs to one thing and not another," says Lix. It's like trying to read type on multiple sheets of overhead film stuck together. It's nonsense until you separate the sheets and read them one at a time, he says.

The other big advantage is speed. At the level of 3D spectrometry, "it will make a routine study almost an order of magnitude faster," he said.

Lix says researchers across campus are expressing interest in the machine. Its capabilities don't just apply to biochemistry. The National Centre for Upgrader Technology in Devon will be using the NMR for research in the oil and gas industry and it has direct applications to research in the pulp and paper, food and agricultural industries.

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