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The NMR structures of the TM1112 and TM1367 proteins from Thermotoga maritima in solution at 298 K were determined following a new protocol which uses the software package UNIO for extensive automation. The results obtained with this novel procedure were evaluated by comparison with the crystal structures solved by the JCSG at 100 K to 1.83 and 1.90 Å resolution, respectively. In addition, the TM1112 solution structure was compared with an NMR structure solved by the NESG using a conventional largely interactive methodology. For both proteins, the newly determined NMR structure could be superimposed with the crystal structure with r.m.s.d. values of <1.0 Å for the backbone heavy atoms, which provided a starting platform to investigate local structure variations, which may arise from either the methods used or from the different chemical environments in solution and in the crystal. Thereby, these comparative studies were further explored with the use of reference NMR and crystal structures, which were computed using the NMR software with input of upper-limit distance constraints derived from the molecular models that represent the results of structure determination by NMR and by X-ray diffraction, respectively. The results thus obtained show that NMR structure calculations with the new automated UNIO software used by the JCSG compare favorably with those from a more labor-intensive and time-intensive interactive procedure. An intriguing observation is that the `bundles' of two TM1112 or three TM1367 molecules in the asymmetric unit of the crystal structures mimic the behavior of the bundles of 20 conformers used to represent the NMR solution structures when comparing global r.m.s.d. values calculated either for the polypeptide backbone, the core residues with solvent accessibility below 15% or all heavy atoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The JCSG has recently developed a protocol for systematic comparisons of high-quality crystal and NMR structures of proteins. In this paper, the extent to which this approach can provide function-related information on the two functionally annotated proteins TM1081, a Thermotoga maritima anti-σ factor antagonist, and A2LD1 (gi:13879369), a mouse γ-glutamylamine cyclotransferase, is explored. The NMR structures of the two proteins have been determined in solution at 313 and 298 K, respectively, using the current JCSG protocol based on the software package UNIO for extensive automation. The corresponding crystal structures were solved by the JCSG at 100 K and 1.6 Å resolution and at 100 K and 1.9 Å resolution, respectively. The NMR and crystal structures of the two proteins share the same overall molecular architectures. However, the precision of the structure determination along the amino-acid sequence varies over a significantly wider range in the NMR structures than in the crystal structures. Thereby, in each of the two NMR structures about 65% of the residues have displacements below the average and in both proteins the less well ordered residues include large parts of the active sites, in addition to some highly solvent-exposed surface areas. Whereas the latter show increased disorder in the crystal and in solution, the active-site regions display increased displacements only in the NMR structures, where they undergo local conformational exchange on the millisecond time scale that appears to be frozen in the crystals. These observations suggest that a search for molecular regions showing increased structural disorder and slow dynamic processes in solution while being well ordered in the corresponding crystal structure might be a valid initial step in the challenge of identifying putative active sites in functionally unannotated proteins with known three-dimensional structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is provided to three papers which compare corresponding protein crystal and NMR solution structures determined by the Joint Center for Structural Genomics (JCSG). Special mention is made of the JCSG strategy for combined use of the two techniques, and of potential applications of the concept of `reference crystal structures', which is introduced in the following three papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]