Metal binding to the amyloid β‐peptide is suggested to be involved in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. We used high‐resolution NMR to study zinc binding to amyloid β‐peptide 1–40 at physiologic pH. Metal binding induces a structural change in the peptide, which is in chemical exchange on an intermediate rate, between the apo‐form and the holo‐form, with respect to the NMR timescale. This causes loss of NMR signals in the resonances affected by the binding. Heteronuclear correlation experiments, 15N‐relaxation and amide proton exchange experiments on amyloid β‐peptide 1–40 revealed that zinc binding involves the three histidines (residues 6, 13 and 14) and the N‐terminus, similar to a previously proposed copper‐binding site [Syme CD, Nadal RC, Rigby SE, Viles JH (2004) J Biol Chem279, 18169–18177]. Fluorescence experiments show that zinc shares a common binding site with copper and that the metals have similar affinities for amyloid β‐peptide. The dissociation constant Kd of zinc for the fragment amyloid β‐peptide 1–28 was measured by fluorescence, using competitive binding studies, and that for amyloid β‐peptide 1–40 was measured by NMR. Both methods gave Kd values in the micromolar range at pH 7.2 and 286 K. Zinc also has a second, weaker binding site involving residues between 23 and 28. At high metal ion concentrations, the metal‐induced aggregation should mainly have an electrostatic origin from decreased repulsion between peptides. At low metal ion concentrations, on the other hand, the metal‐induced structure of the peptide counteracts aggregation.

This article deals with the solution structure determination of paramagnetic metalloproteins by NMR spectroscopy. These proteins were believed not to be suitable for NMR investigations for structure determination until a decade ago, but eventually novel experiments and software protocols were developed, with the aim of making the approach suitable for the goal and as user-friendly and safe as possible. In the article, we also give hints for the optimization of experiments with respect to each particular metal ion, with the aim of also providing a handy tool for nonspecialists. Finally, a section is dedicated to the significant progress made on 13C direct detection, which reduces the negative effects of paramagnetism and may constitute a new chapter in the whole field of NMR spectroscopy.

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.

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The complete assignment of the resonances of a protein is key to the determination of its solution structure by NMR spectroscopy and for the study of protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions. The proton-based assignment strategy usually starts with the correlation of individual resonances of each amino acid residue through scalar connectivities followed by linking them one after the other. [1,2] Although many different triple-resonance NMR spectroscopy experiments have been designed for full assignments, [2] spectral overlap can still lead to ambiguities. This poses a significant limiting factor in the cases of large and/or paramagnetic biomolecules. [3] After the pioneering report of 13 C NMR spin-system assignments of 13 C-enriched Anabaena 7120 ferredoxin by Markley and co-workers, [4] heteronuclear NMR spectroscopy experiments were progressively abandoned in favor of 1 Hdetection experiments. However, as was recently pointed out, heteronuclear NMR spectroscopy decreases the effect of detrimental transverse relaxation, which is typical of large or paramagnetic proteins. [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] For this reason, several heteronuclear NMR spectroscopy experiments for backbone assignment have been proposed for fully 13 C-and 15 N-enriched proteins. [13,14,17] Furthermore, backbone sequence-specific assignment by the recently-designed CANCO experiment has also been reported. [18] We present herein an extension of the set of exclusively heteronuclear experiments to protein side chain resonances for the complete heteronuclear assignment of a protein. With a novel CBCACO experiment the carbonyl carbon (CO) is linked to the C b and to the C a nuclei; the connection to the rest of the amino acid side chain is achieved through a 13 C-13 C TOCSY experiment with C a detection. In these experiments, we have successfully implemented spin-state selection methods for the removal of signal splitting in the acquisition dimension which is caused by multiple 13 C-13 C scalar couplings. This makes 13 C detection an amenable tool for high-resolution NMR spectroscopy. The proposed assignment strategy is summarized in Figure 1. A Figure 1. Illustration of the assignment procedure for 13 C NMR spectroscopy experiments. The assignment starts with analysis of the CACO experiment, which provides the correlation between the carbonyl carbon (CO) and the C a nuclei of each amino acid. The spin-system assignment is extended to the C b nuclei with the CBCACO experiment, and the process is completed with the TOCSY experiment, which provides correlation between the C a and the other carbon nuclei of the amino acid side chain. The amino acid spin systems are finally assigned in a sequence-specific manner with the aid of a CANCO experiment, [18] which provides the correlation of each CO to the two neighboring C a nuclei.

The oxidized blue copper proteins azurin and stellacyanin have been investigated through 1H NMR at 800 MHz and the results compared with those for plastocyanin (Bertini, I.; Ciurli, S.; Dikiy, A.; Gasanov, R.; Luchinat, C.; Martini, G.; Safarov, N. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1999, 121, 2037). By exploiting saturation transfer between the oxidized and the reduced forms, all the hyperfine shifted signals can be assigned, including the β-CH2 protons of the coordinated cysteines, which are so broad not to be detected under direct observation. Both hyperfine shifts and line widths of the latter signals differ dramatically from one protein to another:  average hyperfine shifts of about 850, 600, and 400 ppm and average line widths of 1.2, 0.45, and 0.25 MHz are observed for azurin, plastocyanin, and stellacyanin, in that order. The observation of a nuclear line width of 1.2 MHz is unprecedented in high-resolution NMR in solution. These data are interpreted as a measure of the out-of-plane displacement of the copper ion, which increases on passing from azurin to plastocyanin to stellacyanin. The present approach seems general for the investigation of blue copper proteins.

Natively unfolded proteins are increasingly recognized to play important physiological roles. These proteins do not crystallize, so NMR is the only technique able to provide structural and dynamic information. However, in unfolded proteins, the proton chemical shift dispersion is poor, causing severe problems in resonance assignment. We designed a novel strategy based on two protonless experiments, a CBCACON-IPAP and a novel COCON-IPAP, that permits a straightforward and unequivocal backbone heteronuclear assignment of the natively unfolded protein alpha-synuclein.