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Electron spins scare the NMR community whereas they should not (Bertini & Luchinat, 1986). The theory is just an extension of NMR theory which includes the spin of the electrons just like other nuclear spins.

The interaction of formate and acetate ions with cobalt-substituted carbonic anhydrase (CA) has been investigated through 13C-NMR and one-dimensional and two-dimensional 1H-NMR spectroscopy. 13C data on formate are consistent with a regularly coordinated ligand, as previously proposed for the acetate anion [Bertini, I., Luchinat, C. & Scozzafava, A. (1977) J. Chem. Soc. Dalton Trans., 1962–1965]. 1H-NOE experiments on both anions give evidence of through-space interactions between ligand protons and protein protons. The latter are assigned to specific residues in the active cavity through nuclear Overhauser effect spectroscopy (NOESY) experiments. The 13C-derived and 1H-derived constrains allow reliable docking of these ligands in the active-site cavity. The resulting geometries are similar to one another and consistent with five-coordinated structures around the metal ion, as previously proposed from electronic spectroscopy [Bertini, I., Canti, G., Luchinat, C. & Scozzafava, A. (1978) J. Am. Chem. Soc. 100, 4873–4877]. The results are discussed in light of the current debate on anion binding to metal ions in carbonic anhydrase [Lindahl, M., Svensson, A. & Liljas, A. (1992) Proteins, in the press]; Bertini, I., Luchinat, C., Pierattelli, R. & Vila, A. J. (1992) Inorg. Chem., in the press; Banci, L. & Merz, K. (1992) unpublished results] and, in particular, of the proposed long Zn-O distance found in the recent X-ray results on the formate adduct [Hakanson, K., Carlsson, M., Svensson, A. & Liljas, A. (1992) J. Mol. Biol., in the press].

The structure of ClO4 and NO3 adducts of cobalt(II) substituted bovine carbonic anhydrase have been investigated through 1D NOE and 2D 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. For the first time two-dimensional NMR techniques are applied to paramagnetic metalloproteins other than iron-containing proteins. Several active site signals have been assigned to specific protons on the grounds of their scalar and dipolar connectivities and T1 values. The experimental dipolar shifts for the protons belonging to noncoordinated residues have allowed the identification of a plausible orientation of the magnetic susceptibility tensor around the cobalt ion as well as of the magnitude and the anisotropy of the principal susceptibility values. In turn, a few more signals have been tentatively assigned on the grounds of their predicted dipolar shifts. The two inhibitor derivatives have a very similar orientation but a different magnitude of the chi tensor, and the protein structure around the active site is highly maintained. The results encourage a more extensive use of the two-dimensional techniques for obtaining selective structural information on the active site of metalloenzymes. With this information at hand, comparisons within homologous series of adducts with various inhibitors and/or mutants of the same enzyme of known structure should be possible using limited sets of NMR data.

NMR experiments and tools for the characterization of the structure and dynamics of paramagnetic proteins are presented here. The focus is on the importance of (13)C direct-detection NMR for the assignment of paramagnetic systems in solution, on the information contained in paramagnetic effects observed both in solution and in the solid state, and on novel paramagnetism-based tools for the investigation of conformational heterogeneity in protein-protein complexes or in multi-domain proteins.

The detailed structural characterization of a protein is a fundamental step for the understanding of its biological function. Such characterization can be carried out through X-ray studies. However, the latter have to be performed in the solid state and consequently information on the structural and dynamic features of protein in solution is not achieved. Furthermore, in several cases single crystals might not be available due to the difficulties of crystallization or to the instability of the compound, especially when protein-substrate adducts are to be analyzed.

Cytochrome P450 (P450) from Rhodococcus rhodochrous have been characterized through circular dichroism and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, both in the substrate-free and substrate-bound forms. The data are compared with those of P450cam and indicate a close similarity of the structure of the active site in the two proteins. The substrate-free species contains low-spin iron(III), while the 2-ethoxyphenol bound species contains high-spin iron(III). The substrate is in slow exchange on the NMR time scale. The binding of CN- has been investigated and the final adduct characterized through NMR spectra. Nuclear relaxation times of the isotropically shifted signals turn out to be shorter than in other heme proteins, both in the high- and in the low-spin species. This is the result of longer electron relaxation times in P450s than in peroxidases and metmyoglobin. This property, as well as the electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectrum of the substrate-free form, are discussed in terms of the presence of the cysteine as the fifth ligand of the iron ion instead of a histidine as it occurs in peroxidases and myoglobin.

Paramagnetic NMR data can be profitably incorporated in structural refinement protocols of metalloproteins or metal-substituted proteins, mostly as distance or angle restraints. However, they could in principle provide much more information, because the magnetic susceptibility of a paramagnetic metal ion is largely determined by its coordination sphere. This information can in turn be used to evaluate changes occurring in the coordination sphere of the metal when ligands (e.g.: inhibitors) are bound to the protein. This gives an experimental handle on the molecular structure in the vicinity of the metal which falls in the so-called blind sphere. The magnetic susceptibility anisotropy tensors of cobalt(II) and nickel(II) ions bound to human carbonic anhydrase II in free and inhibited forms have been determined. The change of the magnetic susceptibility anisotropy is directly linked to the binding mode of different ligands in the active site of the enzyme. Indication about the metal coordination sphere in the presence of an inhibitor in pharmaceutically relevant proteins could be important in the design of selective drugs with a structure-based approach.

Resonance assignment is a prerequisite for almost any NMR-based study of proteins. It can be very challenging in some cases, however, due to the nature of the protein under investigation. This is the case with intrinsically disordered proteins, for example, whose NMR spectra suffer from low chemical shifts dispersion and generally low resolution. For these systems, sequence specific assignment is highly time-consuming, so the prospect of using automatic strategies for their assignment is very attractive. In this article we present a new version of the automatic assignment program TSAR dedicated to intrinsically disordered proteins. In particular, we demonstrate how the automatic procedure can be improved by incorporating methods for amino acid recognition and information on chemical shifts in selected amino acids. The approach was tested in silico on 16 disordered proteins and experimentally on α-synuclein, with remarkably good results. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10858-016-0024-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

12 pags., 4 figs., 3 tabs., SARS-CoV-2 (SCoV2) and its variants of concern pose serious challenges to the public health. The variants increased challenges to vaccines, thus necessitating for development of new intervention strategies including anti-virals. Within the international Covid19-NMR consortium, we have identified binders targeting the RNA genome of SCoV2. We established protocols for the production and NMR characterization of more than 80 % of all SCoV2 proteins. Here, we performed an NMR screening using a fragment library for binding to 25 SCoV2 proteins and identified hits also against previously unexplored SCoV2 proteins. Computational mapping was used to predict binding sites and identify functional moieties (chemotypes) of the ligands occupying these pockets. Striking consensus was observed between NMR-detected binding sites of the main protease and the computational procedure. Our investigation provides novel structural and chemical space for structure-based drug design against the SCoV2 proteome., Work at BMRZ is supported by the state of Hesse. Work in Covid19-NMR was supported by the Goethe Corona Funds, by the IWBEFRE-program 20007375 of state of Hesse, the DFG through CRC902: “Molecular Principles of RNA-based regulation.” and through infrastructure funds (project numbers: 277478796, 277479031, 392682309, 452632086, 70653611) and by European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program iNEXT-discovery under grant agreement No 871037. BY-COVID receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement number 101046203. “INSPIRED” (MIS 5002550) project, implemented under the Action “Reinforcement of the Research and Innovation Infrastructure,” funded by the Operational Program “Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation” (NSRF 2014–2020) and co-financed by Greece and the EU (European Regional Development Fund) and the FP7 REGPOT CT-2011-285950—“SEE-DRUG” project (purchase of UPAT’s 700 MHz NMR equipment). The support of the CERM/CIRMMP center of Instruct-ERIC is gratefully acknowledged. This work has been funded in part by a grant of the Italian Ministry of University and Research (FISR2020IP_02112, ID-COVID) and by Fondazione CR Firenze. A.S. is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [SFB902/B16, SCHL2062/2-1] and the Johanna Quandt Young Academy at Goethe [2019/AS01]. M.H. and C.F. thank SFB902 and the Stiftung Polytechnische Gesellschaft for the Scholarship. L.L. work was supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR, NMR-SCoV2-ORF8), the Fondation de la Recherche Médicale (FRM, NMR-SCoV2-ORF8), FINOVI and the IR-RMN-THC Fr3050 CNRS. Work at UConn Health was supported by grants from the US National Institutes of Health (R01 GM135592 to B.H., P41 GM111135 and R01 GM123249 to J.C.H.) and the US National Science Foundation (DBI 2030601 to J.C.H.). Latvian Council of Science Grant No. VPP-COVID-2020/1-0014. National Science Foundation EAGER MCB-2031269. This work was supported by the grant Krebsliga KFS-4903-08-2019 and SNF-311030_192646 to J.O. P.G. (ITMP) The EOSC Future project is co-funded by the European Union Horizon Programme call INFRAEOSC-03-2020—Grant Agreement Number 101017536. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL

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 + (diamagnetic) or Cu 2+ (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.

The chemical shifts of several 13C nuclei positioned α to the haems in oxidised cyanide complexes of horseradish peroxidase and lignin peroxidase are reported and analysed in terms of π molecular orbitals with perturbed D4h symmetry. The additional contributions to the paramagnetic shifts of 13C nuclei in the vinyl groups which arise from conjugation with the porphyrin π molecular orbitals are discussed, and an empirical correction factor is derived from a number of other compounds which contain haems b. The orbital mixing parameter which is obtained from the analysis of the experimental 13C shifts is compared with the orientation of the axial histidine ligands in X-ray structures of related compounds and found to be close to the orientation of the normal to the histidine ring. Comparison with the magnetic axes determined by fitting the dipolar shifts of several protons which have been assigned previously also shows close agreement with the negative in-plane rotation of the magnetic y axis. It is therefore possible to obtain the approximate orientation of the magnetic axes from 13C resonances of the haem and hence to determine the dipolar shifts at any point in space with respect to the haem by using these axes together with the anisotropy of the magnetic susceptibility, which can be obtained by extrapolation from EPR g values. Excellent agreement is found between dipolar shifts obtained by fitting an empirical magnetic susceptibility tensor and predictions based on 13C NMR and EPR in the case of lignin peroxidase. The agreement is less good in the case of horseradish peroxidase, in which the empirical magnetic z axis appears to be tilted significantly away from the haem normal, though this may be due in part to the lack of accurate atomic coordinates. It is concluded that useful estimates of the magnetic susceptibility tensor may be obtained from 13C NMR and EPR studies even in large mammalian peroxidases for which no structural models are available.

Here we introduce a new pulse sequence for resonance assignment that halves the number of data sets required for sequential linking by directly correlating sequential amide resonances in a single diagonal-free spectrum. The method is demonstrated with both microcrystalline and sedimented deuterated proteins spinning at 60 and 111 kHz, and a fully protonated microcrystalline protein spinning at 111 kHz, with as little as 0.5 mg protein sample. We find that amide signals have a low chance of ambiguous linkage, which is further improved by linking in both forward and backward directions. The spectra obtained are amenable to automated resonance assignment using general-purpose software such as UNIO-MATCH.

The three-dimensional structure in solution of reduced recombinant high-potential iron-sulfur protein iso-I from Ectothiorhodospira halophila was determined using 948 relevant interproton NOEs out of the 1246 observed NOEs. The determination was accomplished using the XEASY program for spectral analysis and the distance geometry (DG) program DIANA for generation of the structure as described by Wiithrich (Wiithrich, K. (1989) Acc. Chem. Res. 22, 36-44). The FeS cluster was simulated using an amino acid residue constructed for the present work from a cysteinyl residue with an iron and a sulfur atom attached to the terminal thiol. The family of structures obtained from distance geometry were subjected to energy minimization and molecular dynamics simulations using previously defined force field parameters. The quality of these structures at each stage of the refinement process is discussed with respect to the dihedral angle order parameter and the root-mean-square deviation of the atomic coordinates. The latter values for the backbone atoms vary from 67 pm for the distance-geometry structures to 60 pm for the energy-minimized structures to 51 pm for the structures subjected to restrained molecular dynamics. Finally, the structure in best agreement with the NOE constraints has been further treated with extensive restrained molecular dynamics in water. The solution structure is well defined and is very similar to the available X-ray structure. We do not know of any previous determination of the structure of a paramagnetic protein in solution by NMR. The effect of paramagnetism on the quality of the structure determination is discussed.

Cytochrome c 2 from Rhodopseudomonas palustris has been isolated and characterized by UV-Vis, electron paramagnetic resonance and NMR spectroscopy. The latter, through natural abundance 1 H- 13 C heteronuclear multiple quantum coherence experiments and homonuclear 2D spectra, allowed us to assign the signals of the heme substituents and of the iron-bound histidine and methionine. An analysis of the 13 C chemical shift of the heme substituents has allowed us to localize the axes of the magnetic susceptibility tensor. The latter are consistent with the orientation of the two axial ligands s found from our NOE datae. he pH dependence of the shifts showed a p K a = 6.9 and the presence of a further p K a above 8.0. The present investigation shows how to appropriate use of NMR spectroscopy can provide a wealth of structural and electronic information even in the absence of any biochemical data.

Molecular chaperones such as Hsp40 and Hsp70 hold the androgen receptor (AR) in an inactive conformation. They are released in the presence of androgens, enabling transactivation and causing the receptor to become aggregation-prone. Here we show that these molecular chaperones recognize a region of the AR N-terminal domain (NTD), including a FQNLF motif, that interacts with the AR ligand-binding domain (LBD) upon activation. This suggests that competition between molecular chaperones and the LBD for the FQNLF motif regulates AR activation. We also show that, while the free NTD oligomerizes, binding to Hsp70 increases its solubility. Stabilizing the NTD-Hsp70 interaction with small molecules reduces AR aggregation and promotes its degradation in cellular and mouse models of the neuromuscular disorder spinal bulbar muscular atrophy. These results help resolve the mechanisms by which molecular chaperones regulate the balance between AR aggregation, activation and quality control., Hsp chaperones stabilize the inactive conformation of androgen receptor (AR) and are released upon hormone-induced AR activation. Here, the authors locate the Hsp binding region on AR, and show that Hsp70 reduces AR aggregation and promotes AR degradation in cellular and mouse models of a neuromuscular disorder.