Probing Slow Chemical Exchange at Carbonyl Sites in Proteins by Chemical Exchange Saturation Transfer NMR Spectroscopy

Targeting a Dark Excited State of HIV-1 Nucleocapsid by Antiretroviral Thioesters Revealed by NMR Spectroscopy

HIV-1 nucleocapsid (NCp7) is a two Cys₂ HisCys zinc knuckle (N-Zn and C-Zn) protein that plays a key role in viral replication. NCp7 conformational dynamics is characterized by NMR relaxation dispersion and chemical exchange saturation transfer measurements. While the N-Zn knuckle is conformationally stable, the C-Zn knuckle interconverts on the millisecond timescale between the major state, in which the zinc is coordinated by three cysteines and a histidine, and two folded minor species (with populations around 1 %) in which one of the coordination bonds (Cys413-Sγ-Zn or His421-Nϵ2-Zn) is hydrolyzed. These findings explain why antiretroviral thioesters specifically disrupt the C-Zn knuckle by initial acylation of Cys413, and show that transient, sparsely-populated ("dark"), excited states of proteins can present effective targets for rational drug design.

A computational study of the effects of (13) C-(13) C scalar couplings on (13) C CEST NMR spectra: towards studies on a uniformly (13) C-labeled protein

Read the label: The NMR CEST experiment can be used to reconstruct spectra of sparsely populated, transiently formed protein conformers so long as they exchange with a highly populated ground state with rates of 20-300 s(-1) . Here we establish that accurate (13) C chemical shifts of side-chain carbon nuclei can be obtained from uniformly (13) C-labeled samples, without interference from the coupled (13) C spin network.