SESAME‐HSQC for simultaneous measurement of NH and CH scalar and residual dipolar couplings

Abstract

We present a novel pulse sequence, SESAME-HSQC, for the simultaneous measurement of several NH and CH scalar and residual dipolar couplings in double labeled proteins. The proposed Spin-statE Selective All Multiplicity Edited (SESAME)-HSQC combines gradient selected and sensitivity enhanced (15)N- and constant-time (13)C-HSQC experiments with the recently introduced spin-state selective method (Nolis et al., J. Magn. Reson. 180 (2006) 39-50) for measuring couplings simultaneously at amide and aliphatic regions. Excellent resolution and high sensitivity is warranted by removing all coupling interactions during the indirectly detected t(1) period, and by employing pulsed field gradients for coherence selection and utilizing coherence order selective spin-state selection. The scalar and residual dipolar couplings can be readily measured from a two-dimensional (15)N/(13)C-HSQC spectrum without additional spectral crowding. SESAME-HSQC can be used for epitope mapping by observing chemical shift changes in both amide and aliphatic regions. Simultaneously, potential conversion in protein conformation can be probed by analyzing changes in residual dipolar couplings induced by ligand binding. The pulse sequence is experimentally verified with a sample of (15)N/(13)C enriched human ubiquitin. The internuclear vector directions determined from the residual dipolar couplings are found to be in excellent correlation with those predicted from ubiquitin's refined solution structure.