Many new NMR pH indicator compounds have been characterized, both endogenous and exogenous, which probe both pH i and extracellular pH (pH e). In many cases, 31P-spectra are collected routinely as a means of assessing the energetic and acid–base status of a plant or animal sample during an experimental procedure. Today, NMR methods of pH measurement are common in clinical as well as in academic settings. Indeed, hundreds of papers have been published as a direct result of Moon and Richards' original contribution, and the indirect impact of their work on the development of other applications of NMR to biology may be even greater. The ability to probe a quantity as integral to cellular function as pH in living, unperturbed cells offered the promise of vast new insights into cellular metabolism. In what has become a classic paper, Moon and Richards (1973) demonstrated that phosphate compounds which occur naturally in cells could be used to measure intracellular pH (pH i) non-invasively using 31P nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR).
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