Distant dipolar field (DDF)-based nuclear magnetic resonance is an active research area with many fundamental properties still not well understood. Already several intriguing applications have developed, like HOMOGENIZED and IDEAL spectroscopy, that allow high resolution spectra to be obtained in inhomogeneous fields, such as in-vivo. The theoretical and experimental research in this thesis concentrates on the fundamental signal properties of DDF-based sequences in the presence of relaxation (T1 and T2) and diffusion. A general introduction to magnetic resonance phenomenon is followed by a more in depth introduction to the DDF and its effects. A novel analytical signal equation has been developed to describe the effects of T2 relaxation and diffusing spatially modulated longitudinal spins during the signal build period of an HOMOGENIZED cross peak. Diffusion of the longitudinal spins results in a lengthening of the effective dipolar demagnetization time, delaying the re-phasing of coupled anti-phase states in the quantum picture. In the classical picture the unwinding rate of spatially twisted magnetization is no longer constant, but decays exponentially with time. The expression is experimentally verified for the HOMOGENIZED spectrum of 100mM TSP in H2O at 4.7T. Equations have also been developed for the case of multiple repetition steady state 1d and 2d spectroscopic sequences with incomplete magnetization recovery, leading to spatially varying longitudinal magnetization. Experimental verification has been accomplished by imaging the profile. The equations should be found generally applicable for those interested in DDF-based spectroscopy and imaging.

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States. Cisplatin is one of the well-known anti-cancer agents used to treat testicular and ovarian cancers. It mainly binds to the DNA bases, which leads to cell death. The cytotoxic activity of the cisplatin analogs is due to the interaction of platinum with nucleotides like adenine at N7 or N1 position and guanine at N7 position. Guanine is the primary target for cisplatin analogs whereas adenine is the secondary target. Cisplatin analogs, [Pt(Me5dien)(D2O)]2+[Me5dien = N,N,N’,N’,N’’-pentamethyl diethylene triamine] and [Pt(dien)(D2O)]2+[dien=diethylene triamine] were synthesized and their effects on AMP and GMP were studied using NMR spectroscopy. The experiments were conducted to examine the effects of bulk on 5’-GMP and 5’-AMP. The results suggest that bulk slows down the reaction with AMP more than with that of GMP. The order of reactivity is Pt(dien)(GMP)> Pt(dien)(AMP) > Pt(Me5dien)(GMP) > Pt(Me5dien)(AMP). The reaction of the [Pt(Me5dien)(D2O)]2+ complex with AMP leads to multiple products, some of which appear to be due to coordination at N1 instead of N7.

Spin selective MQ-SQ correlation has been demonstrated by either selective pulses in homo-nuclear spin systems in isotropic and weakly orienting chiral media or by nonselective pulses in hetero-nuclear spin systems in strongly aligned media. As a consequence of the spin selective correlation, the coherence transfer pathway from MQ to SQ is spin state selective. This two dimensional approach enables the utilization of the passive couplings (remote couplings) to break a complex one dimensional spectrum into many sub spectra. Each sub spectrum contains fewer transitions and hence fewer couplings (active couplings). The role of the passive couplings is to displace the sub spectra and measurement of the displacements taking into account their relative tilt provides the magnitude of the passive couplings along with relative signs. Further possibility of a spin state selective MQ-SQ resolved experiment to determine very small remote couplings otherwise buried within linewidth in one dimensional spectrum has been demonstrated. The resolution of the multiple quantum spectrum in indirect dimension has also been exploited to separate the sub spectra. The technique renders the analysis of complex spectrum in isotropic system much simpler. The potentialities of the technique have also been demonstrated for discrimination of optical enantiomers and derivation of the residual dipolar couplings from very complicated spectrum. The second order spectrum in strongly aligned media restrict selective excitation, however in hetero-nuclear spin system the nonselective pulses on protons do not interact with the hetero-nuclear spins. Thus the weakly coupled part of a strongly coupled spectrum has been exploited for simplifying the second order spectrum and thereby its analysis. Thus several methodologies derived from spin selective correlation has been demonstrated. Enantiopure spectrum has been recorded from a mixture of R and S enantiomers by a novel pulse scheme called Double Quantum Selective Refocusing Experiment. The dipolar coupled methyl protons in weakly orienting media are utilized. The selective excitation of double quantum coherence reduces the three spin system into a two spin system and remote couplings are refocused which otherwise leads to broadening. The sum of passive couplings being different for the enantiomers resolution in the DQ dimension is enhanced and thereby their discrimination. Finally several decoupling schemes has been compared in the indirect dimension of HSQC experiment to resolve 13C satellite spectra otherwise buried within line width for increased confidence in determining hetero-nuclear framework information.