Pre-Homonuclear Decoupling Enables High-Resolution NMR Analysis of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins in Solution.

Abstract

Probing the atomic details of intrinsically disordered proteins is crucial to understanding their biological function and relation to pathogenesis. Although amide-detected NMR experiments are widely employed in protein studies, 3JHNHα couplings between amide (1HN) and alpha (1Hα) protons impose an intrinsic limit on the achievable 1HN linewidth. Here, we present a homonuclear decoupling method that narrows the α-synuclein 1HN linewidths to 3-5 Hz. Tightly distributed 1JCαHα coupling values were employed to generate homogeneous antiphase coherences of 2HαzHNy and 4Hα(2)zHα(3)zHNy for nonglycine and glycine residues, respectively, which were combined with their in-phase HNy counterparts to achieve homonuclear decoupling. By reducing the multiplet structure to a singlet, the width of the 1HN cross-peak was reduced by ∼3-fold in the 2D HSQC and 3D intra-HNCA spectra, and good spectral quality was achieved without the need for postprocessing.