Rotational dynamics of transfer ribonucleic acid: effect of ionic strength and concentration

We have investigated the influence of ionic strength and nucleic acid concentration on the rotational Brownian motion of Escherichia coli tRNA1Val by studying the decay of the fluorescence polarization anisotropy (FPA) of intercalated ethidium on a nanosecond time scale. The rotational relaxation time tau R remains essentially constant as the ionic strength is varied from 2 to 100 mM at a tRNA concentration of 54 mg/mL. tau R also remains practically unchanged as the tRNA concentration is varied from 0.3 to 54 mg/mL at an ionic strength of 130 mM. Present hydrodynamic theories generally predict a more pronounced concentration dependence for rotational diffusion than we observe. This disagreement may result from a nonrandom distribution of the tRNA molecules in solution due to electrostatic interactions. By combining independent data from time-resolved nuclear Overhauser effect (NOE) cross-relaxation experiments and FPA experiments on the same tRNA, we are able to estimate the interproton spacing for the guanine N1-H and the uracil N3-H of the GU-50 base pair in E. coli tRNA1Val. This distance is 0.272 nm.