One- and two- dimensional 15N/1H NMR of filamentous phage coat proteins in solution

High resolution 15N NMR studies of proteins in solution can be performed efficiently by combining the use of isotopically enriched proteins and pulse sequences that generate polarization transfer from protons and result in two-dimensional heteronuclear chemical shift correlation spectra. The coat proteins of the filamentous bacteriophages fd and Pf1 solubilized in detergent micelles give one- and two- dimensional NMR spectra with resolved resonances for nearly all of the nitrogen sites in the proteins. The resonances from the amide sites with slowly exchanging protons can be obtained as a subset of the resonances of all amide sites by comparing the spectra of proteins in D2O and H2O solutions at pH = 4.0.