Isotopically Discriminated NMR Spectroscopy:  A Tool for Investigating Complex Protein Interactions in Vitro

A new NMR approach is presented for observing in vitro multicomponent protein-protein-ligand(s) interactions, which should help to understand how cellular networks of protein interactions operate on a molecular level and how they can be controlled with drugs. The method uniquely allows at least two polypeptide components of the mixture to be simultaneously closely monitored in a single sample, without increased signal overlap, and can be used to study complex (e.g., sequential, competitive, cooperative, allosteric, induced, etc.) binding events, witnessed by two polypeptides independently. One polypeptide is uniformly labeled with 15N and another with 15N and 13C. The 1H-15N correlation spectra are recorded for each of these molecules separately, discriminated on the basis of the type of 13C'/12C' atom attached to the amide group nitrogen. Any changes to the state of the two differently isotopically labeled molecules will be reported individually by fingerprint signals from amide groups, e.g., as unlabeled ligands are added. To our knowledge, no other technique currently exists which can monitor complex binding events in similar detail. The proposed method can be combined easily with traditional protein NMR techniques and incorporated in a variety of applications.