The last decade has witnessed a vast increase in biological applications of solid-state NMR. While much of the pioneering work was performed by a handful of designated groups, nowadays the topic has found entry into many of the laboratories traditionally occupied with soluble samples and into all major NMR conferences. This Special Issue covers a wide range of experimental approaches, from conventional wideline and MAS-NMR to oriented samples and the use of special gradient techniques, and it focuses on several types of biological systems. Starting with lipid bilayers, a number of papers present data on model membranes reconstituted with different additives such as cholesterol, drugs, or peptides. By observing the embedded polypeptide or protein directly by NMR, several contributions then continue with the structure analysis of membrane-active peptides, ion channels, receptors and the like. A different class of biological macromolecules is finally addressed by studies on self-assembled samples such as amyloid fibrils, silk, and elastic proteins, before finishing up with a set of improved NMR techniques.
As guest editors we are delighted about the many high-quality articles from both established colleagues and young scientists, whose contributions emerged mainly from three recent NMR conferences: 'Solid-State NMR Spectroscopy' at the Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan (organized by Ayyalusamy Ramamoorthy as part of the 34th Central Regional ACS Meeting in June 2002), 'Recent Innovations in Biological Solid-State NMR' at the University of Oxford (organized by Anthony Watts as a joint meeting of the British Biophysical Society and the Institute of Physics in September 2002), and 'Magnetic Resonance and Molecular Interactions' at the University of Bremen (co-organized by Anne S. Ulrich as a meeting of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker in September 2002). We gratefully acknowledge all the sponsors of these conferences and thank Anni Barwig for her secretarial help in assembling this issue.