Revisiting the initial rate approximation in kinetic NOE measurements.

The nuclear Overhauser effect (NOE) is undoubtedly one of the most useful tools in NMR spectroscopy and is widely used in solving structural and conformational problems of small organic molecules and macromolecular systems alike. In particular, measurement of the kinetics of the NOE, often facilitated by selective 1D NOE buildup experiments, can generate invaluable quantitative distance information for the molecule being investigated. In practice, analysis of such kinetic NOE data routinely assumes a first-order approximation of the initial buildup rate. However, often times such an approximation holds true only for the shortest mixing times. As shown by Macura and others, the linear range of the NOE buildup obtained from 2D NOESY and exchange experiments can be substantially extended by simply scaling the NOE cross-peaks against the corresponding diagonal peaks. In this note, we demonstrate through a detailed analysis that the same approach can be applied to the analysis of 1D NOE data obtained with the DPFGSE NOE pulse sequence, one of the most widely used selective 1D NOE experiments today. We show that this approach allows the inclusion of data points acquired with much longer mixing times in the analysis and thus considerably improves the accuracy of the measured cross-relaxation rates and internuclear distances, while considerably simplifying the data analysis. Similar results can be obtained for the rotating frame DPFGSE ROE experiment.