Abstract
Amyloid fibrils are large and insoluble protein assemblies composed of a rigid core associated with a cross-β arrangement rich in β-sheet structural elements. It has been widely observed in solid-state NMR experiments that semi-rigid protein segments or side chains do not yield easily observable NMR signals at room temperature. The reasons for the missing peaks may be due to the presence of unfavorable dynamics that interfere with NMR experiments, which result in very weak or unobservable NMR signals. Therefore, for amyloid fibrils, semi-rigid and dynamically disordered segments flanking the amyloid core are very challenging to study. Here, we show that high-field dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP), an NMR hyperpolarization technique typically performed at low temperatures, can circumvent this issue because (i) the low-temperature environment (~ 100 K) slows down the protein dynamics to escape unfavorable detection regime, (ii) DNP improves the overall NMR sensitivity including those of flexible side chains, and (iii) efficient cross-effect DNP biradicals (SNAPol-1) optimized for high-field DNP (≥ 18.8 T) are employed to offer high sensitivity and resolution suitable for biomolecular NMR applications. By combining these factors, we have successfully established an impressive enhancement factor of ε ~ 50 on amyloid fibrils using an 18.8 T/ 800 MHz magnet. We have compared the DNP efficiencies of M-TinyPol, NATriPol-3, and SNAPol-1 biradicals on amyloid fibrils. We found that SNAPol-1 (with ε ~ 50) outperformed the other two radicals. The MAS DNP experiments revealed signals of flexible side chains previously inaccessible at conventional room-temperature experiments. These results demonstrate the potential of MAS-DNP NMR as a valuable tool for structural investigations of amyloid fibrils, particularly for side chains and dynamically disordered segments otherwise hidden at room temperature.
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Acknowledgements
A. Loquet acknowledges financial support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (ERC-2015-StG GA No. 639020). A. Lends was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation for the early postdoc mobility project (P2EZP2_184258). K.O.T is grateful for the fundings granted by the French National Research Agency: PulsedDNP (ANR-20-ERC9-0008) and HFPulsedDNP (ANR-21-CE29-0019). Financial support from the IR INFRANALYTICS FR2054 for conducting the research is gratefully acknowledged. Y.P.L. acknowledges the support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 22174099 and 21871210) and Science & Technology Projects of Tianjin (No. 20JCZDJC00050).
Funding
Funding was provided by European Research Council (639020), Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (P2EZP2_184258), Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-20-ERC9-0008), National Natural Science Foundation of China (22174099), and Tianjin Science and Technology Program (20JCZDJC00050).
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A. Lends, A. Loquet, and KOT designed the research. The NMR samples were prepared in Bordeaux, while the DNP experiments were performed at ENS. XC and YPL provided the radicals. A. Lends wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors prepared the figures, edited, and reviewed the manuscript.
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Lends, A., Birlirakis, N., Cai, X. et al. Efficient 18.8 T MAS-DNP NMR reveals hidden side chains in amyloid fibrils. J Biomol NMR 77, 121–130 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10858-023-00416-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10858-023-00416-5