NMR detection of protein 15N spins near paramagnetic lanthanide ions.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Ah Young Park.
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Rational drug design depends on the knowledge of the three-dimensional (3D) structure of complexes between proteins and lead compounds of low molecular weight. A novel nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy strategy based on the paramagnetic effects from lanthanide ions allows the rapid determination of the 3D structure of a small ligand molecule bound to its protein target in solution and, simultaneously, its location and orientation with respect to the protein. The method relies on the presence of a lanthanide ion in the protein target and on fast exchange between bound and free ligand. The binding affinity of the ligand and the paramagnetic effects experienced in the bound state are derived from concentration-dependent (1)H and (13)C spectra of the ligand at natural isotopic abundance. Combined with prior knowledge of the crystal or solution structure of the protein and of the magnetic susceptibility tensor of the lanthanide ion, the paramagnetic data define the location and orientation of the bound ligand molecule with respect to the protein from simple 1D NMR spectra. The method was verified with the ternary 30 kDa complex between the lanthanide-labeled N-terminal domain of the epsilon exonuclease subunit from the Escherichia coli DNA polymerase III, the subunit theta, and thymidine. The binding mode of thymidine was found to be very similar to that of thymidine monophosphate present in the crystal structure.
Anisotropic magnetic susceptibility tensors chi of paramagnetic metal ions are manifested in pseudocontact shifts, residual dipolar couplings, and other paramagnetic observables that present valuable long-range information for structure determinations of protein-ligand complexes. A program was developed for automatic determination of the chi-tensor anisotropy parameters and amide resonance assignments in proteins labeled with paramagnetic metal ions. The program requires knowledge of the three-dimensional structure of the protein, the backbone resonance assignments of the diamagnetic protein, and a pair of 2D 15N-HSQC or 3D HNCO spectra recorded with and without paramagnetic metal ion. It allows the determination of reliable chi-tensor anisotropy parameters from 2D spectra of uniformly 15N-labeled proteins of fairly high molecular weight. Examples are shown for the 185-residue N-terminal domain of the subunit epsilon from E. coli DNA polymerase III in complex with the subunit theta and La3+ in its diamagnetic and Dy3+, Tb3+, and Er3+ in its paramagnetic form.
A novel nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) strategy based on labeling with lanthanides achieves rapid determinations of accurate three-dimensional (3D) structures of protein-protein complexes. The method employs pseudocontact shifts (PCS) induced by a site-specifically bound lanthanide ion to anchor the coordinate system of the magnetic susceptibility tensor in the molecular frames of the two molecules. Simple superposition of the tensors detected in the two protein molecules brings them together in a 3D model of the protein-protein complex. The method is demonstrated with the 30 kDa complex between two subunits of Escherichia coli polymerase III, comprising the N-terminal domain of the exonuclease subunit epsilon and the subunit theta. The 3D structures of the individual molecules were docked based on a limited number of PCS observed in 2D 15N-heteronuclear single quantum coherence spectra. Degeneracies in the mutual orientation of the protein structures were resolved by the use of two different lanthanide ions, Dy3+ and Er3+.
The catalytic core of Escherichia coli DNA polymerase III contains three tightly associated subunits, the alpha, epsilon, and theta subunits. The theta subunit is the smallest and least understood subunit. The three-dimensional structure of theta in a complex with the unlabeled N-terminal domain of the epsilon subunit, epsilon186, was determined by multidimensional nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The structure was refined using pseudocontact shifts that resulted from inserting a lanthanide ion (Dy3+, Er3+, or Ho3+) at the active site of epsilon186. The structure determination revealed a three-helix bundle fold that is similar to the solution structures of theta in a methanol-water buffer and of the bacteriophage P1 homolog, HOT, in aqueous buffer. Conserved nuclear Overhauser enhancement (NOE) patterns obtained for free and complexed theta show that most of the structure changes little upon complex formation. Discrepancies with respect to a previously published structure of free theta (Keniry et al., Protein Sci. 9:721-733, 2000) were attributed to errors in the latter structure. The present structure satisfies the pseudocontact shifts better than either the structure of theta in methanol-water buffer or the structure of HOT. satisfies these shifts. The epitope of epsilon186 on theta was mapped by NOE difference spectroscopy and was found to involve helix 1 and the C-terminal part of helix 3. The pseudocontact shifts indicated that the helices of theta are located about 15 A or farther from the lanthanide ion in the active site of epsilon186, in agreement with the extensive biochemical data for the theta-epsilon system.
Paramagnetic metal ions can induce molecular alignment with respect to the magnetic field. This alignment generates residual anisotropic chemical shifts (RACS) due to nonisotropic averaging over the molecular orientations. Using a 30 kDa protein-protein complex, the RACS effects are shown to be significant for heteronuclear spins with large chemical shift anisotropies, lanthanide ions with large anisotropic magnetic susceptibility tensors, and measurements at high magnetic field. Therefore, RACS must be taken into account when pseudocontact shifts are measured by comparison of chemical shifts observed between complexes with paramagnetic and diamagnetic lanthanide ions. The results are of particular importance when different pseudocontact shifts measured for the 1HN, 15N, and 13C' spins of a peptide group are used to restrain its orientation with respect to the electronic magnetic susceptibility tensor in structure calculations.
A novel strategy for fast NMR resonance assignment of (15)N HSQC spectra of proteins is presented. It requires the structure coordinates of the protein, a paramagnetic center, and one or more residue-selectively (15)N-labeled samples. Comparison of sensitive undecoupled (15)N HSQC spectra recorded of paramagnetic and diamagnetic samples yields data for every cross-peak on pseudocontact shift, paramagnetic relaxation enhancement, cross-correlation between Curie-spin and dipole-dipole relaxation, and residual dipolar coupling. Comparison of these four different paramagnetic quantities with predictions from the three-dimensional structure simultaneously yields the resonance assignment and the anisotropy of the susceptibility tensor of the paramagnetic center. The method is demonstrated with the 30 kDa complex between the N-terminal domain of the epsilon subunit and the theta subunit of Escherichia coli DNA polymerase III. The program PLATYPUS was developed to perform the assignment, provide a measure of reliability of the assignment, and determine the susceptibility tensor anisotropy.