His council will be sorely missed, but the example and standards that he set for us both in- and outside Science will remain with us as a lesson throughout our lives. I am sure that many of us who had the good fortune of knowing Callaghan from up close, could write about the many and diverse lessons that Paul taught us with his exemplary life and behavior. In an effort to honor and celebrate Paul’s legacy we decided to pick on one such topic, and invited one of his long time

friends and collaborators to write a short reminiscence of their experiences together. We are grateful to Prof. Ed. Samulski Veliparib to have complied with this request in short notice. E haere rā – Goodbye, friend “
“In a non-deuterated environment, short spin echo dephasing times (Tm) [1], [2] and [3], in the order of 2–4 μs, are usually observed, when studying nitroxide spin-labeled proteins, in frozen solution at around 50 K. A Tm of 2 μs limits the measurement of distances, in the PELDOR experiment [4] and [5], to around 3–4 nm and also limits the sensitivity. Tm

is affected by contributions from instantaneous and spectral diffusion as well as hyperfine interactions with surrounding nuclei. Unpaired electrons can show dipolar coupling to nuclear spins in the surrounding media and although individual nuclear spin flip is slow, the large number of coupled nuclei in a typical protein makes these events highly probable and spin flips in dipolar coupled nuclei change the precession frequency www.selleckchem.com/products/MDV3100.html SPTLC1 of the unpaired electron. Dipolar coupling is proportional to the magnetic moment, so proton spin diffusion is a more effective mechanism of dephasing electron spins than would be deuterium [6] and as a result the use of deuterated solvents can moderately increase the Tm

to around 5–6 μs [1]. More significantly, it has been demonstrated that total deuteration of a protein, containing a site-specific nitroxide spin-label pair extended the Tm dramatically, giving a value of approximately 36 μs [7]. A Tm of this magnitude permits substantial increase in the maximum distance measurement, better background correction, more accurate distance distribution determination and considerably higher sensitivity. Although total system deuteration has demonstrated dramatic increases in Tm, no study has previously investigated the detailed spatial relationship between protein deuteration and Tm or indeed examined the temperature and concentration dependence of relaxation under these conditions. The relaxation time Tm can be described by an equation utilizing a homogeneous concentration of protons around the spin label [8] and [9]. This model is suitable to describe relaxation caused by the solvent but is inadequate in its description of relaxation caused by the structured environment of the underlying protein.