Assignment Of Protein NMR Spectra Research Articles

CONNJUR R: an annotation strategy for fostering reproducibility in bio-NMR-protein spectral assignment.

Reproducibility is a cornerstone of the scientific method, essential for validation of results by independent laboratories and the sine qua non of scientific progress. A key step toward reproducibility of biomolecular NMR studies was the establishment of public data repositories (PDB and BMRB). Nevertheless, bio-NMR studies routinely fall short of the requirement for reproducibility that all the data needed to reproduce the results are published. A key limitation is that considerable metadata goes unpublished, notably manual interventions that are typically applied during the assignment of multidimensional NMR spectra. A general solution to this problem has been elusive, in part because of the wide range of approaches and software packages employed in the analysis of protein NMR spectra. Here we describe an approach for capturing missing metadata during the assignment of protein NMR spectra that can be generalized to arbitrary workflows, different software packages, other biomolecules, or other stages of data analysis in bio-NMR. We also present extensions to the NMR-STAR data dictionary that enable machine archival and retrieval of the "missing" metadata.

Assignment of protein NMR spectra based on projections, multi-way decomposition and a fast correlation approach

We present an approach for the assignment of protein NMR resonances that combines established and new concepts: (a) Based on published reduced dimensionality methods, two 5-dimensional experiments are proposed. (b) Multi-way decomposition (PRODECOMP) applied simultaneously to all acquired NMR spectra provides the assignment of resonance frequencies under conditions of very low signal-to-noise. (c) Each resulting component characterizes all spin (1/2) nuclei in a (doubly-labeled) CbetaH(n)-CalphaH-C'-NH-CalphaH-CbetaH(n) fragment in an unambiguous manner, such that sequentially neighboring components have about four atoms in common. (d) A new routine (SHABBA) determines correlations for all component pairs based on the common nuclei; high correlation values yield sequential chains of a dozen or more components. (e) The potentially error-prone peak picking is delayed to the last step, where it helps to place the component chains within the protein sequence, and thus to achieve the final backbone assignment. The approach was validated by achieving complete backbone resonance assignments for ubiquitin.

A modified strategy for sequence specific assignment of protein NMR spectra based on amino acid type selective experiments

The determination of the three-dimensional structure of a protein or the study of protein-ligand interactions requires the assignment of all relevant nuclei as an initial step. This is nowadays almost exclusively performed using triple-resonance experiments. The conventional strategy utilizes one or more pairs of three dimensional spectra to obtain redundant information and thus reliable assignments. Here, a modified strategy for obtaining sequence specific assignments based on two dimensional amino acid type selective triple-resonance experiments is proposed. These experiments can be recorded with good resolution in a relatively short time. They provide very specific and redundant information, in particular on sequential connectivities, that drastically increases the ease and reliability of the assignment procedure, done either manually or in an automated fashion. The new strategy is demonstrated with the protein domain PB1 from yeast CDC24p.

Ansig for Windows: an interactive computer program for semiautomatic assignment of protein NMR spectra.

Assignment of NMR spectra is a prerequisite for structure determination of proteins using NMR. The time spent on the assignment is comparatively long compared to that spent on other parts in the protein structure determination process, but it can be shortened by using either interactive or fully automated computer programs. To benefit from the advantages of both types of program we have developed a version of the interactive assignment program ANSIG to include automatized, yet user-supervised, routines. The new program includes tools for (i) semiautomatic sequential assignment, (ii) plotting of distances from PDB structure files directly in NMR spectra and (iii) statistical analysis of distance restraint violations with the possibility to directly zoom to violated NOEs in NOESY spectra.

CAMRA: chemical shift based computer aided protein NMR assignments.

A suite of programs called CAMRA (Computer Aided Magnetic Resonance Assignment) has been developed for computer assisted residue-specific assignments of proteins. CAMRA consists of three units: ORB, CAPTURE and PROCESS. ORB predicts NMR chemical shifts for unassigned proteins using a chemical shift database of previously assigned homologous proteins supplemented by a statistically derived chemical shift database in which the shifts are categorized according to their residue, atom and secondary structure type. CAPTURE generates a list of valid peaks from NMR spectra by filtering out noise peaks and other artifacts and then separating the derived peak list into distinct spin systems. PROCESS combines the chemical shift predictions from ORB with the spin systems identified by CAPTURE to obtain residue specific assignments. PROCESS ranks the top choices for an assignment along with scores and confidence values. In contrast to other auto-assignment programs, CAMRA does not use any connectivity information but instead is based solely on matching predicted shifts with observed spin systems. As such, CAMRA represents a new and unique approach for the assignment of protein NMR spectra. CAMRA will be particularly useful in conjunction with other assignment methods and under special circumstances, such as the assignment of flexible regions in proteins where sufficient NOE information is generally not available. CAMRA was tested on two medium-sized proteins belonging to the chemokine family. It was found to be effective in predicting the assignment providing a database of previously assigned proteins with at least 30% sequence identity is available. CAMRA is versatile and can be used to include and evaluate heteronuclear and three-dimensional experiments.

Application of neural networks to automated assignment of NMR spectra of proteins

Simulated neural networks are described which aid the assignment of protein NMR spectra. A network trained to recognize amino acid type from TOCSY data was trained on 148 assigned spin systems from E. coli acyl carrier proteins (ACPs) and tested on spin systems from spinach ACP, which has a 37% sequence homology with E. coli ACP and a similar secondary structure. The output unit corresponding to the correct amino acid is one of the four most activated units in 83% of the spin systems tested. The utility of this information is illustrated by a second network which uses a constraint satisfaction algorithm to find the best fit of the spin systems to the amino acid sequence. Application to a stretch of 20 amino acids in spinach ACP results in 75% correct sequential assignment. Since the output of the amino acid type identification network can be coupled with a variety of sequential assignment strategies, the approach offers substantial potential for expediting assignment of protein NMR spectra.

Assignment of protein nmr spectra in the light of homonuclear 3D spectroscopy: An automatable procedure based on 3D TOCSY‐TOCSY and 3D TOCSY‐NOESY

Automated assignment of proteins is greatly simplified using data from 3D-nmr spectra. A strategy is presented which makes use of 3D-TOCSY-TOCSY and 3D-TOCSY-NOESY; its potential is demonstrated with the example of the spectra of BPTI. The discussion of the potential of 3D-nmr includes the introduction of a simple graph for the description of the information content of multidimensional nmr spectra.

Heteronuclear three-dimensional NMR spectroscopy of the inflammatory protein C5a

The utility of three-dimensional heteronuclear NMR spectroscopy for the assignment of 1H and 15N resonances of the inflammatory protein C5a (MW 8500), uniformly labeled with 15N, is demonstrated at a protein concentration of 0.7 mM. It is shown that dramatic simplification of the 2D nuclear Overhauser effect spectrum (NOESY) is obtained by editing with respect to the frequency of the 15N heteronucleus in a third dimension. The improved resolution in the 3D experiment largely facilitates the assignment of protein NMR spectra and allows for the determination of distance constraints from otherwise overlapping NOE cross peaks for purposes of 3D structure determination. The results show that 15N heteronuclear 3D NMR can facilitate the structure determination of small proteins and promises to be a useful tool for the study of larger systems that cannot be studied by conventional 2D NMR techniques.