Orientational and Motional Narrowing of Solid-State NMR Lineshapes of Uniaxially Aligned Membrane Proteins

Abstract

A unified theory for the NMR line shapes of aligned membrane proteins arising from uniaxial disorder (mosaic spread) and global rotational diffusion about the director axis is presented. A superoperator formalism allows one to take into account the effects of continuous radiofrequency irradiation and frequency offsets in the presence of dynamics. A general method based on the Stochastic Liouville Equation makes it possible to bridge the static and dynamic limits in a single model. Simulations of solid-state NMR spectra are performed for a uniform α helix by considering orientational disorder and diffusion of the helix as a whole relative to the alignment axis. The motional narrowing of the resonance lines is highly inhomogeneous and can be used as an additional angular restraint in structure calculations. Experimental solid-state NMR spectra of Pf1 coat protein support the conclusions of the theory for two limiting cases. The static disorder dominates the (15)N NMR spectra of Pf1 aligned on a phage, while fast uniaxial diffusion provides a line narrowing mechanism for the Pf1 protein reconstituted in magnetically aligned bicelles.