“…The use of other, often more dilute, NMR-active nuclei can alleviate this problem, depending on their location in or around the vesicle bilayer. For example, the functioning of ion channels, and their inhibition by various compounds such as toxins or anaesthetics has been investigated using 7 Li and 23 Na NMR and the use of paramagnetic shift reagents based on dysprosium (III) [15,16]. The lipids themselves, can be observed directly using the single phosphorus atom located in the head group of each molecule.…”