Improved isotopic profiling by pure shift heteronuclear 2D J-resolved NMR spectroscopy

Quantitative information on the carbon isotope content of metabolites is essential for flux analysis. Whereas this information is in principle present in proton NMR spectra through both direct and long-range heteronuclear coupling constants, spectral overlap and homonuclear coupling constants both hinder its extraction. We demonstrate here how pure shift 2D J-resolved NMR spectroscopy can simultaneously remove the homonuclear couplings and separate the chemical shift information from the heteronuclear coupling patterns. We demonstrate the power of this method on cell lysates from different bacterial cultures and investigate in detail the branched chain amino acid biosynthesis