American Association for the Advancement of Science, Science, 6333(356), 2017
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Picking structures out of a lineup Pharmaceutical research relies critically on determining the correct structures of numerous complex molecules. When well-ordered crystals are not available for x-ray analysis, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is the most common structure-elucidation method. However, sometimes it is hard to distinguish isomers with similar spectra. Liu et al. showcase a protocol that combines computer modeling with anisotropic NMR data acquired using gel-aligned samples. Because of its uniform sensitivity to relative bond orientations across the whole molecular framework, the method overcomes common pitfalls that can lead to invalid structure assignments. Science , this issue p. eaam5349