We report use of dynamic nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to measure the amide rotational barrier in isonicotinamide. A significant challenge to obtaining good transition rates from dynamic NMR data is suppression of errors due to inherent line widths associated with transverse relaxation. We address this challenge with a fitting procedure that incorporates transverse relaxation over the temperature range of interest simply and reliably. The fitting model is nonlinear in only one of the fit parameters, namely, the activation enthalpy. This reduces parameter estimation to solution of a single transcendental equation, which avoids both a fine search over a multidimensional parameter space and extrapolation of a "limiting line width" solely from slow-exchange data. The activation enthalpy Delta H++ measured for isonicotinamide, +14.1 +/- 0.2 kcal/mol, falls between those of its regioisomers picolinamide and nicotinamide, which were reported in an earlier study. In that study, ab initio calculations of the rotational barriers helped to discern the relative importance of steric, electronic, and hydrogen-bonding effects in this biochemically significant combination of pyridine-ring and carboxamide moieties. A direct comparison between isonicotinamide and nicotinamide, where steric and hydrogen-bonding effects differ only slightly, permits a closer study of electronic considerations.
