Post mortem analysis of hepatic volume and lipid content by magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy in fixed murine neonates.

Maternal obesity and hyperglycemia are linked to an elevated risk for obesity, diabetes, and steatotic liver disease in the adult offspring. To establish and validate a noninvasive workflow for perinatal metabolic phenotyping, fixed neonates of common mouse strains were analyzed postmortem via magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)/magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) to assess liver volume and hepatic lipid (HL) content. The key advantage of nondestructive MRI/MRS analysis is the possibility of further tissue analyses, such as immunohistochemistry, RNA extraction, and even proteomics, maximizing the data that can be gained per individual and therefore facilitating comprehensive correlation analyses.

Reproducibility of absolute quantification of adenosine triphosphate and inorganic phosphate in the liver with localized P-magnetic resonance spectroscopy at 3-T using different coils.

Concentrations of the key metabolites of hepatic energy metabolism, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and inorganic phosphate (P), can be altered in metabolic disorders such as diabetes mellitus. Phosphorus (P)-magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) is used to noninvasively measure hepatic metabolites, but measuring their absolute molar concentrations remains challenging. This study employed a P-MRS method based on the phantom replacement technique for quantifying hepatic P-metabolites on a 3-T clinical scanner.

Differentiating between Label and Protein Conformers in Pulsed Dipolar EPR Spectroscopy with the dHis-Cu (NTA) Motif.

Pulsed dipolar EPR spectroscopy (PDS) in combination with site-directed spin labeling is a powerful tool in structural biology. However, the commonly used spin labels are conjugated to biomolecules via rather long and flexible linkers, which hampers the translation of distance distributions into biomolecular conformations. In contrast, the spin label copper(II)-nitrilotriacetic acid [Cu (NTA)] bound to two histidines (dHis) is rigid and yields narrow distance distributions, which can be more easily translated into biomolecular conformations.