The amyloid fibrils of beta-amyloid (Aβ) peptides play important roles in the pathology of Alzheimer's disease. Comprehensive solid-state NMR (SSNMR) structural studies on uniformly isotope-labeled Aβ assemblies have been hampered for a long time by sample heterogeneity and low spectral resolution. In this work, SSNMR studies on well-ordered fibril samples of Aβ(40) with an additional N-terminal methionine provide high-resolution spectra which lead to an accurate structural model. The fibrils studied here carry distinct structural features compared to previous reports. The inter-β-strand contacts within the U-shaped β-strand-turn-β-strand motif are shifted, the N-terminal region adopts a β-conformation, and new inter-monomer contacts occur at the protofilament interface. The revealed structural diversity in Aβ fibrils points to a complex picture of Aβ fibrillation.

We introduce a new approach to improve structural and dynamical determination of large metalloproteins using solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) with 1 H detection under ultrafast magic angle spinning (MAS). The approach is based on the rapid and sensitive acquisition of an extensive set of 15 N and 13 C nuclear relaxation rates. The system on which we demonstrate these methods is the enzyme Cu, Zn superoxide dismutase (SOD), which coordinates a Cu ion available either in Cu þ (diamagnetic) or Cu 2þ (paramagnetic) form. Paramagnetic relaxation enhancements are obtained from the difference in rates measured in the two forms and are employed as structural constraints for the determination of the protein structure. When added to 1 H-1 H distance restraints, they are shown to yield a twofold improvement of the precision of the structure. Site-specific order parameters and timescales of motion are obtained by a Gaussian axial fluctuation (GAF) analysis of the relaxation rates of the diamagnetic molecule, and interpreted in relation to backbone structure and metal binding. Timescales for motion are found to be in the range of the overall correlation time in solution, where internal motions characterized here would not be observable.paramagnetism | nuclear relaxation rates | copper | microcrystal S tructure determination of proteins plays a central role in understanding key events in biology. Although the structure of many proteins can be obtained from single-crystal X-ray diffraction, or by solution-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, there is nevertheless a range of important substrates for which structures cannot be determined today. These include immobile systems lacking long-range order such as protein aggregates, large complexes and membrane-bound systems.Solid-state NMR has the unique potential to study, with atomic resolution, systems of this nature, and spectacular progress has been made in this area over the last decade (1). There are today a small handful of structures obtained by solid-state NMR, from microcrystalline samples to fibrils and membrane-associated systems (2). Additionally, solid-state NMR is uniquely sensitive to site-specific protein dynamics over a broad range of timescales, and a number of demonstration studies have recently appeared for model proteins (3).The use of perdeuterated proteins has very recently opened the way to highly sensitive proton-detected solid-state experiments (4). Despite early proof-of-principle papers (5), this approach only became popular with the realization that amide sites must be only partially reprotonated (typically 10-30% back exchange) (6-8) to yield well-resolved 1 H spectra. This represented a significant compromise in sensitivity to gain resolution, and effectively made the determination of internuclear distances impractical, with few exceptions (9-11). We have recently shown how this problem can be completely overcome by using 100% reprotonation of exchangeable sites, without loss of resolution, if perdeuteration is combined wit...

Cellular systems allow transition-metal ions to reach or leave the cell or intracellular locations through metal transfer between proteins. By coupling mutagenesis and advanced NMR experiments, we structurally characterized the adduct between the copper chaperone Atx1 and the first copper(I)-binding domain of the Ccc2 ATPase. Copper was required for the interaction. This study provides an understanding of metal-mediated protein-protein interactions in which the metal ion is essential for the weak, reversible interaction between the partners.