Detecting and Characterizing Interactions of Metabolites with Proteins by Saturation Transfer Difference Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (STD NMR) Spectroscopy

Saturation transfer difference (STD) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is an established technique for detecting and characterizing the binding of small molecules, such as metabolites, to biological macromolecules like proteins and nucleic acids. STD NMR allows detection of binding in complex mixtures of potential ligands, which is often used for library screening in the pharmaceutical industry but may also be beneficial for binding studies with metabolite mixtures. The nature of the ligand is normally restricted to small molecules in terms of NMR spectroscopy, and the size of the macromolecule on the other side should be larger than 10-15 kDa. This technique is especially applicable to detecting binders of intermediate to low affinity with the dissociation constant (K_D) above 1 μM. In this chapter, we focus on recent developments and the applications of STD NMR to studying interactions of natural products and metabolites, in particular. The reader is also referred to excellent reviews of the field and the literature cited therein. This chapter also provides a detailed experimental protocol for performing the STD NMR measurement based on the example of the subunit A of the Na⁺-transporting NADH/ubiquinone oxidoreductase (Na⁺-NQR) from V. cholerae interacting with its natural quinone substrate and inhibitors.