{"id":1172,"date":"2019-03-19T11:14:10","date_gmt":"2019-03-19T11:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mub.eps.manchester.ac.uk\/in-abstract\/?p=1172"},"modified":"2019-08-22T08:40:28","modified_gmt":"2019-08-22T07:40:28","slug":"dissect-and-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mub.eps.manchester.ac.uk\/in-abstract\/dissect-and-divide\/","title":{"rendered":"Dissect and Divide: Putting NMR spectra of mixtures under the knife"},"content":{"rendered":"

British stout dissected with a virtual scalpel<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is hard to overstate the importance of mixture analysis: it underpins progress in most areas of chemistry, biology and pharmacy, and by extension such areas as food safety, security and healthcare. Advances in scientific understanding and economic progress alike depend on our ability to analyse complex mixtures. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is one of the most powerful techniques we have for analysing pure compounds, but it currently struggles with all but the simplest mixtures. In complex mixtures it is often impossible to tell which signals come from which species, so costly separation is needed for analysis. This is frustrating, because NMR, which is non-destructive and non-invasive, has the potential to analyse intact mixtures, without the need for separation.<\/p>\n

Researchers in the NMR Methodology Group at the University of Manchester\u2019s School of Chemistry have developed a new NMR method for analyzing complex intact mixtures, demonstrating it by extracting the NMR spectra of individual sugars in stout beer. SCALPEL (Spectral Component Acquisition by Localized PARAFAC Extraction of Linear components) dissects the spectrum rather than the sample, using NMR experiments tailored to generate data suitable for powerful statistical analysis. It represents a step function improvement in our ability to analyse challenging mixtures, and has the potential to tackle problems well beyond the reach of current methods.<\/p>\n

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