BrightnESS² is a three-year, EU-funded project within the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme which focuses on the long-term sustainability of ESS and neutron scattering in Europe, and to further strengthen the network of facilities for research using neutrons. A total of 15 institutes and universities from Europe and South Africa are participants within the project.

As part of BrightnESS² the Deuteration Facility at the SFTC (UK) and the ESS Chemical Deuteration Laboratory (SE) are collaborating on the synthesis of structured deuterated phospholipids. At the moment, a limited number of deuterated, mixed acyl phospholipids (Figure 1) are available, and those that are available and prohibitively expensive for many neutron users and experiments.

The STFC Deuteration Laboratory has a wealth of experience in the synthesis of homo-acyl phospholipids and an active user community which continuously requests new phospholipid analogues for neutron experiments. The ESS Chemical Deuteration Laboratory is researching the application of enzymatic catalysis to the synthesis of deuterated molecules. Together, the facilities are working together to establish a new, modular method for the synthesis of tail-deuterated, mixed-acyl phospholipids, using enzymes to allow the regiospecific substitution of tails at the 1- and 2-positions. The modularity of the approach should mean that a large number of molecules can be accessed. The first target molecules are 1-palmitoyl-d31-2-oleoyl-d33-sn-3-phosphocholine (POPC-d64, Figure 2a) and 1-palmitoyl-d31-2-(9-oxononanoyl)-sn-3-phosphocholine (PoxnoPC-d31, Figure 2b).