NMR is the only detection technique

NMR is the only detection technique that allows the analysisof all kinds of small metabolites and in which the samples canthus be recovered for further analyzes. The great majority of NPschemists consider that NMR is close to being a universaldetector for structure elucidation. The main advantages of NMRare high analytical reproducibility and simplicity of samplepreparation. In practice it is relatively insensitive compared tomass spectrometry-based techniques. In fact, recent advancesin MS enable this method to have has as much structuralelucidation potential as NMR. However it is not yet commonlyused in this perspective by NPs researchers. While NMR and MSare the most widely used techniques, other methods of detection that have been used include ion-mobility spectrometry,electrochemical detection (coupled to HPLC), radiolabel (whencombined with TLC) and X-ray crystallography. Due to theirenormous signicance as dereplication methods MS, X-raysingle crystal diffraction (SCD) and NMR will be focused in extradetail in Sections 6.3 and 7, 8 and 9, respectively.