
New insights: how potassium and sodium are conducted through ion channels
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Artistic representation of phages of the family Siphoviridae (yellow and blue) that infect a bacterial cell (green). The excerpt (circle) shows the atomic structure of the DNA tube (yellow), through which the phages inject their DNA into the bacterium. (Visualization: Barth van Rossum, FMP) © Barth van Rossum
NMR spectroscopy enables us to look into the very heart of matter, creating close-ups in atomic resolution. In a powerful magnetic field, some atomic nuclei contained in the samples are turned into small magnets themselves and become aligned in accordance with the outer field. Depending on the chemical environment, they then absorb the energy of radio waves, from which it is possible to determine the structure of biological molecules, using complicated methods of calculation.