Protein in water solution increases magnetic relaxation rates of solvent nuclei to an extent that depends on magnetic field strength and molecular weight. Koenig and Schillinger (J. Biol. Chem. 244, 3283 (1969)) showed that a small fraction of the water molecules in the first hydration shell, bound irrotationally with a residence lifetime in the range 0.1 to 10 microseconds, would account for the phenomena. No experiments, as yet, have proven the existence of such long-lived waters, nor yielded a value for their lifetime. Analogous measurements on solutions of both denatured and cross-linked protein give data different from that of native protein, but much like results for tissue. By comparing proton and deuteron relaxation rates in solutions of native and cross-linked protein, it is possible to demonstrate the existence of these relatively long-lived waters; the data indicate that 1% of a monolayer of the waters of hydration of protein have lifetimes that cluster near 1 microsecond and, it is argued, are held in place by multiple hydrogen bonds. Assigning shorter lifetimes for waters held by fewer bonds, it is possible to develop a unified view of relaxation of water nuclei in protein solutions and in tissue, and to relate it to recent crystallographic data on hydrated protein.
We report results for proton 1/T1, 1/T2, and K, the rate of magnetization transfer from solvent to solute, for 5 and 10 wt. % solutions of bovine serum albumin, both native and chemically cross-linked, in undeuterated and approximately 50% deuterated water, at 4.7 T (200.1 MHz) and 19 degrees C. At this field, although K > 1/T1 for the cross-linked samples, magnetization transfer contributes little to 1/T1 directly. Therefore K was measured using off-resonance irradiation of the protein protons. The data for all the samples can be fit using a theoretical model for magnetization transfer, with three parameters: the intrinsic longitudinal relaxation rates of solute and solvent protons, and K. The magnitude of K is so large that the newly-identified, long-lived (approximately 1 microseconds) hydration sites (S.H. Koenig, R.D. Brown III, and R. Ugolini, Magn. Reson. Med., 29, 77 (1993)) must be invoked to account for K, as is necessary to explain the differential effects of cross linking on the magnetic field dependence of 1/T1 of protons and deuterons and the large 1/T1 and 1/T2 values below approximately 20 MHz in immobilized systems. Although these sites are few in number, their long resident lifetime becomes the correlation time for magnetization transfer when protein is immobilized, accounting for the large value of K. Recent data from several laboratories have shown that cross-linked protein, as used here, is a good model for 1/T1 and 1/T2 of tissue, as a function of temperature and magnetic field.
From analyses of the magnetic field dependence of 1/T1 (NMRD profiles) of water protons in solutions of calf lens alpha-crystallin at several concentrations, we find two regimes of solute behavior in both cortical and nuclear preparations. Below approximately 15% vol/vol protein concentration, the solute molecules appear as compact globular proteins of approximately 1,350 (cortical) and approximately 1,700 (nuclear) kD. At higher concentrations, the effective solute particle size increases, reversibly, as evidenced by the appearance of spectra-like 14N peaks in the NMRD profiles and a change in the field and temperature dependence of 1/T1. At these higher concentrations, the profiles are very similar to those of calf gamma II-crystallin, a crystallin that undergoes an analogous transition near approximately 15% protein (Koenig, S. H., C.F. Beaulieu, R. D. Brown III, and M. Spiller, 1990. Biophys. J. 57:461-469). By comparison with recent analyses of NMRD results for solutions of immobilized proteins as models for the transition from protein solutions to tissue (Koenig, S. H., and R. D. Brown III. 1991. Prog. NMR Spectr. 22:487-567), we argue that alpha-crystallin solute behaves as aggregates approximately greater than 50,000 kD as protein concentration is progressively increased above 15%. Finally, the concentration dependence of the NMRD profiles of alpha- and gamma II-crystallin can readily explain recent osmotic pressure data, in particular the intersection of the respective pressure curves at approximately 23% vol/vol (Vérétout, F., and A. Tardieu. 1989. Eur. Biophys. J. 17:61-68).
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