Suppression of radiation damping during selective excitation of the water signal: The WANTED sequence

Abstract

A new pulse sequence is presented allowing the use of long selective pulses at the water frequency using standard equipment. Radiation damping is suppressed during the pulse by the use of gradient echoes programmed between the single pulses of a DANTE train. This WANTED (water-selective DANTE using gradients) sequence thus allows the observation of interactions with water without the use of special probe heads or filtering of undesired resonances. By combining the WANTED sequence with NOESY, ROESY and NOESY-GSQC experiments, we obtain selective 1D and 2D spectra fit to the observation of chemical exchange and dipolar interactions between water and protein protons.