Sampling of protein dynamics in nanosecond time scale by 15N NMR relaxation and self-diffusion measurements

This paper presents a procedure for detection of intermediate nanosecond internal dynamics in globular proteins. The procedure uses 1H-15N relaxation measurements at several spectrometer frequencies and hydrodynamic calculations based on experimental self-diffusion coefficients. New heteronuclear experiments, using pulse field gradients, are introduced for the measurement of translation diffusion coefficients of 15N labeled proteins. An advanced interpretation of recently published (Luginbühl et al., Biochemistry, 36, 7305-7312 (1997)) backbone amide 15N relaxation data, measured at two spectrometers (400 and 750 MHz for 1H) for N-terminal DNA-binding domain (1-63) of 434 repressor, is presented. Non-applicability of commonly used fast (picosecond) dynamics model (FD) was justified by (i) poor fit of relaxation data by the FD model-free spectral density function both for isotropic and anisotropic models of the overall molecular tumbling; (ii) specific dependence of the overall rotation correlation times calculated from T1/T2 ratio on the spectrometer frequency; (iii) mismatch of the ratio of longitudinal 15N relaxation times T1, measured at different spectrometer frequencies, in comparison with that anticipated for the FD model; (iv) significantly underestimated overall rotation correlation time provided by the FD model (5.50+/-0.15 and 5.80+/-0.15 ns for 750 and 400 MHz spectrometer frequency respectively) in comparison with correlation time obtained from hydrodynamics. On the other hand, all relaxation and hydrodynamics data are in good correspondence with the model of intermediate (nanoseconds) dynamics. Overall rotation correlation time of 7.5+/-0.7 ns was calculated from experimental translation self-diffusion rate using hydrodynamics formalism (Garcia de la Torre, J. and Bloomfield, V.A. Quart. Rev. Biophys., 14, 81-139 (1981)). The statistical analysis of 15N relaxation data along with the hydrodynamic consideration clearly revealed that most of the residues in 434(1-63) repressor are involved in the nanosecond internal dynamics characterized by the the mean order parameters of 0.59+/-0.06 and the correlation times of ca. 5 ns.