13C APSY-NMR for sequential assignment of intrinsically disordered proteins

A call to order: Examining structured domains in biomolecular condensates

Diverse cellular processes have been observed or predicted to occur in biomolecular condensates, which are comprised of proteins and nucleic acids that undergo liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS). Protein-driven LLPS often involves weak, multivalent interactions between intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs). Due to their inherent lack of defined tertiary structures, NMR has been a powerful resource for studying the behavior and interactions of IDRs in condensates. While IDRs in proteins are necessary for phase separation, core proteins enriched in condensates often contain structured domains that are essential for their function and contribute to phase separation. How phase separation can affect the structure and conformational dynamics of structured domains is critical for understanding how biochemical reactions can be effectively regulated in cellular condensates. In this perspective, we discuss the consequences phase separation can have on structured domains and outline NMR observables we believe are useful for assessing protein structure and dynamics in condensates.

13C Direct Detected NMR for Challenging Systems

Thanks to recent improvements in NMR spectrometer hardware and pulse sequence design, modern ¹³C NMR has become a useful tool for biomolecular applications. The complete assignment of a protein can be accomplished by using ¹³C detected multinuclear experiments and it can provide unique information relevant for the study of a variety of different biomolecules including paramagnetic proteins and intrinsically disordered proteins. A wide range of NMR observables can be measured, concurring to the structural and dynamic characterization of a protein in isolation, as part of a larger complex, or even inside a living cell. We present the different properties of ¹³C with respect to ¹H, which provide the rationale for the experiments developed and their application, the technical aspects that need to be faced, and the many experimental variants designed to address different cases. Application areas where these experiments successfully complement proton NMR are also described.

NMR Spectroscopy in the Conformational Analysis of Peptides: An Overview

BACKGROUND

NMR spectroscopy is one of the most powerful tools to study the structure and interaction properties of peptides and proteins from a dynamic perspective. Knowing the bioactive conformations of peptides is crucial in the drug discovery field to design more efficient analogue ligands and inhibitors of protein-protein interactions targeting therapeutically relevant systems.

OBJECTIVE

This review provides a toolkit to investigate peptide conformational properties by NMR.

METHODS

Articles cited herein, related to NMR studies of peptides and proteins were mainly searched through PubMed and the web. More recent and old books on NMR spectroscopy written by eminent scientists in the field were consulted as well.

RESULTS

The review is mainly focused on NMR tools to gain the 3D structure of small unlabeled peptides. It is more application-oriented as it is beyond its goal to deliver a profound theoretical background. However, the basic principles of 2D homonuclear and heteronuclear experiments are briefly described. Protocols to obtain isotopically labeled peptides and principal triple resonance experiments needed to study them, are discussed as well.

CONCLUSION

NMR is a leading technique in the study of conformational preferences of small flexible peptides whose structure can be often only described by an ensemble of conformations. Although NMR studies of peptides can be easily and fast performed by canonical protocols established a few decades ago, more recently we have assisted to tremendous improvements of NMR spectroscopy to investigate instead large systems and overcome its molecular weight limit.

Ensemble description of the intrinsically disordered N-terminal domain of the Nipah virus P/V protein from combined NMR and SAXS

Using SAXS and NMR spectroscopy, we herein provide a high-resolution description of the intrinsically disordered N-terminal domain (PNT, aa 1-406) shared by the Nipah virus (NiV) phosphoprotein (P) and V protein, two key players in viral genome replication and in evasion of the host innate immune response, respectively. The use of multidimensional NMR spectroscopy allowed us to assign as much as 91% of the residues of this intrinsically disordered domain whose size constitutes a technical challenge for NMR studies. Chemical shifts and nuclear relaxation measurements provide the picture of a highly flexible protein. The combination of SAXS and NMR information enabled the description of the conformational ensemble of the protein in solution. The present results, beyond providing an overall description of the conformational behavior of this intrinsically disordered region, also constitute an asset for obtaining atomistic information in future interaction studies with viral and/or cellular partners. The present study can thus be regarded as the starting point towards the design of inhibitors that by targeting crucial protein-protein interactions involving PNT might be instrumental to combat this deadly virus.

Power of Pure Shift HαCα Correlations: A Way to Characterize Biomolecules under Physiological Conditions

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) constitute an important class of biomolecules with high flexibility. Atomic-resolution studies for these molecules are essentially limited to NMR spectroscopy, which should be performed under physiological pH and temperature to populate relevant conformational ensembles. In this context, however, fundamental problems arise with established triple resonance NMR experiments: high solvent accessibility of IDPs promotes water exchange, which disfavors classical amide ¹H-detection, while ¹³C-detection suffers from significantly reduced sensitivity. A favorable alternative, the conventional detection of nonexchangeable ¹Hα, so far resulted in broad signals with insufficient resolution and sensitivity. To overcome this, we introduce here a selective Hα,Cα-correlating pure shift detection scheme, the selective Hα,Cα-HSQC (SHACA-HSQC), using extensive hetero- and homonuclear decoupling applicable to aqueous samples (≥90% H₂O) and tested on small molecules and proteins. SHACA-HSQC spectra acquired on IDPs provide uncompromised resolution and sensitivity (up to fivefold increased S/N compared to the standard ¹H,¹³C-HSQC), as shown for resonance distinction and unambiguous assignment on the disordered transactivation domain of the tumor suppressor p53, α-synuclein, and folded ubiquitin. The detection scheme can be implemented in any ¹Hα-detected triple resonance experiment and may also form the basis for the detection of isotope-labeled markers in biological studies or compound libraries.

Salient Features of Monomeric Alpha-Synuclein Revealed by NMR Spectroscopy

Elucidating the structural details of proteins is highly valuable and important for the proper understanding of protein function. In the case of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), however, obtaining the structural details is quite challenging, as the traditional structural biology tools have only limited use. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a unique experimental tool that provides ensemble conformations of IDPs at atomic resolution, and when studying IDPs, a slightly different experimental strategy needs to be employed than the one used for globular proteins. We address this point by reviewing many NMR investigations carried out on the α-synuclein protein, the aggregation of which is strongly correlated with Parkinson’s disease.

Using Deep Neural Networks to Reconstruct Non-uniformly Sampled NMR Spectra

Non-uniform and sparse sampling of multi-dimensional NMR spectra has over the last decade become an important tool to allow for fast acquisition of multi-dimensional NMR spectra with high resolution. The success of non-uniform sampling NMR hinge on both the development of algorithms to accurately reconstruct the sparsely sampled spectra and the design of sampling schedules that maximise the information contained in the sampled data. Traditionally, the reconstruction tools and algorithms have aimed at reconstructing the full spectrum and thus 'fill out the missing points' in the time-domain spectrum, although other techniques are based on multi-dimensional decomposition and extraction of multi-dimensional shapes. Also over the last decade, machine learning, deep neural networks, and artificial intelligence have seen new applications in an enormous range of sciences, including analysis of MRI spectra. As a proof-of-principle, it is shown here that simple deep neural networks can be trained to reconstruct sparsely sampled NMR spectra. For the reconstruction of two-dimensional NMR spectra, reconstruction using a deep neural network performs as well, if not better than, the currently and widely used techniques. It is therefore anticipated that deep neural networks provide a very valuable tool for the reconstruction of sparsely sampled NMR spectra in the future to come.

Characterizing the inhibition of α-synuclein oligomerization by a pharmacological chaperone that prevents prion formation by the protein PrP

Aggregation of the disordered protein α-synuclein into amyloid fibrils is a central feature of synucleinopathies, neurodegenerative disorders that include Parkinson's disease. Small, pre-fibrillar oligomers of misfolded α-synuclein are thought to be the key toxic entities, and α-synuclein misfolding can propagate in a prion-like way. We explored whether a compound with anti-prion activity that can bind to unfolded parts of the protein PrP, the cyclic tetrapyrrole Fe-TMPyP, was also active against α-synuclein aggregation. Observing the initial stages of aggregation via fluorescence cross-correlation spectroscopy, we found that Fe-TMPyP inhibited small oligomer formation in a dose-dependent manner. Fe-TMPyP also inhibited the formation of mature amyloid fibrils in vitro, as detected by thioflavin T fluorescence. Isothermal titration calorimetry indicated Fe-TMPyP bound to monomeric α-synuclein with a stoichiometry of 2, and two-dimensional heteronuclear single quantum coherence NMR spectra revealed significant interactions between Fe-TMPyP and the C-terminus of the protein. These results suggest commonalities among aggregation mechanisms for α-synuclein and the prion protein may exist that can be exploited as therapeutic targets.

Taking Simultaneous Snapshots of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins in Action

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) as well as intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) of complex protein machineries have recently been recognized as key players in many cellular functions. NMR represents a unique tool to access atomic resolution structural and dynamic information on highly flexible IDPs/IDRs. Improvements in instrumental sensitivity made heteronuclear direct detection possible for biomolecular NMR applications. The CON experiment has become one of the most useful NMR experiments to get a snapshot of an IDP/IDR in conditions approaching physiological ones. The availability of NMR spectrometers equipped with multiple receivers now enables the acquisition of several experiments simultaneously instead of one after the other. Here, we propose several variants of the CON experiment in which, during the recovery delay, a second two-dimensional experiment is acquired, either based on 1H detection (CON//HN) or on 15N detection (CON//btNH, CON//(H)CAN). The possibility to collect simultaneous snapshots of an IDP/IDR through different two-dimensional spectra provides a novel tool to follow chemical reactions, such as the occurrence of posttranslational modifications, as well as to study samples of limited lifetime such as cell lysates or whole cells.

Complete protein assignment from sets of spectra recorded overnight

A flexible and scalable approach for protein NMR is introduced that builds on rapid data collection via projection spectroscopy and analysis of the spectral input data via joint decomposition. Input data may originate from various types of spectra, depending on the ultimate goal: these may result from experiments based on triple-resonance pulse sequences, or on TOCSY or NOESY sequences, or mixtures thereof. Flexible refers to the free choice of spectra for the joint decompositions depending on the purpose: assignments, structure, dynamics, interactions. Scalable means that the approach is open to the addition of similar or different experiments, e.g. larger proteins may require a wider selection of triple-resonance based experiments. Central to the proposed approach is the mutual support among the different spectra during the spectral analysis: for example, sparser triple-resonance spectra may help decomposing (separating) spin systems in a TOCSY or identifying unique NOEs. In the example presented, backbone plus side chain assignments of ubiquitin were obtained from the combination of either two or three of the following projection experiments: a 4D HCCCONH, a 4D HNCACO and a 3D HNCACB. In all cases, TOCSY data (4D HCCCONH) proved crucial not only for the side chain assignments, but also for the sequential assignment. Even when total recording time was reduced to about 10 h, nearly complete assignments were obtained, with very few missing assignments and even fewer differences to a reference.

Transient Secondary Structures as General Target-Binding Motifs in Intrinsically Disordered Proteins

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are unorthodox proteins that do not form three-dimensional structures under non-denaturing conditions, but perform important biological functions. In addition, IDPs are associated with many critical diseases including cancers, neurodegenerative diseases, and viral diseases. Due to the generic name of “unstructured” proteins used for IDPs in the early days, the notion that IDPs would be completely unstructured down to the level of secondary structures has prevailed for a long time. During the last two decades, ample evidence has been accumulated showing that IDPs in their target-free state are pre-populated with transient secondary structures critical for target binding. Nevertheless, such a message did not seem to have reached with sufficient clarity to the IDP or protein science community largely because similar but different expressions were used to denote the fundamentally same phenomenon of presence of such transient secondary structures, which is not surprising for a quickly evolving field. Here, we summarize the critical roles that these transient secondary structures play for diverse functions of IDPs by describing how various expressions referring to transient secondary structures have been used in different contexts.

PreSMo Target-Binding Signatures in Intrinsically Disordered Proteins

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are highly unorthodox proteins that do not form three-dimensional structures under physiological conditions. The discovery of IDPs has destroyed the classical structure-function paradigm in protein science, 3-D structure = function, because IDPs even without well-folded 3-D structures are still capable of performing important biological functions and furthermore are associated with fatal diseases such as cancers, neurodegenerative diseases and viral pandemics. Pre-structured motifs (PreSMos) refer to transient local secondary structural elements present in the target-unbound state of IDPs. During the last two decades PreSMos have been steadily acknowledged as the critical determinants for target binding in dozens of IDPs. To date, the PreSMo concept provides the most convincing structural rationale explaining the IDP-target binding behavior at an atomic resolution. Here we present a brief developmental history of PreSMos and describe their common characteristics. We also provide a list of newly discovered PreSMos along with their functional relevance.