Perdeuteration of biological macromolecules for magic angle spinning solid-state NMR spectroscopy can yield high-resolution 2H–13C correlation spectra and the method is therefore of great interest for the structural biology community. Here we demonstrate that the combination of sample deuteration and dynamic nuclear polarization yields resolved 2H–13C correlation spectra with a signal enhancement of ε ≥ 700 compared to a spectrum recorded with microwaves off and otherwise identical conditions. To our knowledge, this is the first time that 2H-DNP has been employed to enhance MAS-NMR spectra of a biologically relevant system. The DNP process is studied using several polarizing agents and the technique is applied to obtain 2H–13C correlation spectra of U-[2H, 13C] proline.
