HCN, A Triple-Resonance NMR Technique for Selective Observation of Histidine and Tryptophan Side Chains in13C/15N-Labeled Proteins

Abstract

HCN, a new 3D NMR technique for stepwise coherence transfer from1H to13C to15N and reverse through direct spin couplings1JCHand1JCN, is presented as a method for detection and assignment of histidine and tryptophan side-chain1H,13C, and15N resonances in uniformly13C/15N-labeled proteins. Product-operator calculations of cross-peak volumes vs adjustable delay τ3were employed for determination of optimal τ3. For the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K SH3 domain, MW = 9.6 kD) at pH 6, H(C)N, the1H/15N projection, produced observable cross peaks within 20 min. and was completely selective for the single tryptophan and single histidine. The 3D HCN experiment yielded well-defined cross peaks in 20 h for the13C/15N-labeled origin-specific DNA binding domain from simian virus 40 T-antigen (T-ag-OBD131–259, MW = 15.4 kD) at pH 5.5. Resonances from all six histidines in T-ag-OBD were observed, and 11 of the 121H and13C chemical shifts and 10 of the 1215N chemical shifts were determined. The13C dimension proved essential in assignment of the multiply overlapping1H and15N resonances. From the spectra recorded at a single pH, three of the imidazoles were essentially neutral and the other three were partially protonated (22–37%). HCN yielded strong cross peaks after 18 h on a 2.0 mMsample of phenylmethanesulfonyl fluoride (PMSF)-inhibited α-lytic protease (MW = 19.8 kD) at pH 4.4. No spectra have been obtained, however, of native or boronic acid-inhibited α-lytic protease after 18 h at various temperatures ranging from 5 to 55°C, probably due to efficient relaxation of active-site imidazole1H and/or15N nuclei.