Magic-angle-spinning NMR on solid biological systems. Analysis Of the origin of the spectral linewidths

Abstract

Magic-angle-spinning (MAS) high-power 1H-decoupled 13C and 31P NMR has been applied to solid biological materials to obtain information about the mechanisms that determine the spectral linewidths. The line broadening in MAS 31P NMR spectra of solid tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) has been investigated by selective saturation and T 2 measurements. About 90 Hz stems from homogeneous effects, whereas the inhomogeneous contribution is approximately 100 Hz. The inhomogeneous line broadening is assigned to macroscopic inhomogeneities in the sample and not to variations in the nucleotide bases along the RNA strand in TMV. It is concluded that sample preparation is of vital importance for obtaining well-resolved spectra. Under optimal preparation techniques the isotropic values of the chemical shift of the different 31P sites have been determined to obtain information about the secondary structure of the viral RNA. The chemical shift anisotropy has been determined from the relative intensities of the spinning side bands in the spectra. The chemical shift information is used to make a tentative assignment of the resonance in terms of the three structurally distinguishable phosphate groups in TMV. The origin of the linewidths in MAS NMR has been examined further by 13C NMR of approximately 10% 13C-enriched coat protein of cowpea chlorotic mottle virus, using selective excitation and saturation techniques, as well as measurements of the relaxation times T 1 γ and T 2. The CO resonance in the spectrum is composed of an inhomogeneous and homogeneous part with a total linewidth of 700 Hz. The homogeneous linewidth, contributing with 200 Hz, is found to arise from slow molecular motions in the solid on a millisecond timescale.