Science, Vol.268, No.5212, 886-889, 1995
Long-Range Motional Restrictions in a Multidomain Zinc-Finger Protein from Anisotropic Tumbling
Structural characterization of biomolecules in solution by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is based primarily on the use of interproton distances derived from homonuclear cross-relaxation experiments. Information about short time-scale dynamics, on the other hand, is obtained from relaxation rates of heteronuclear spin pairs such as (N-1H)-N-15. By combining the two types of data and utilizing the dependence of heteronuclear NMR relaxation rates on anisotropic diffusional rotational tumbling, it is possible to obtain structural information about long-range motional correlations between protein domains. This approach was applied to characterize the relative orientations and mobilities of the first three zinc-finger domains of the Xenopus transcription factor TFIIIA in aqueous solution. The data indicate that the motions of the individual zinc-finger domains are highly correlated on time scales shorter than 10 nanoseconds and that the average conformation of the three-finger polypeptide is elongated.
Keywords:HETERONUCLEAR NMR-SPECTROSCOPY;TRANSCRIPTION FACTOR-IIIA;INTERNAL CONTROL REGION;DNA-BINDING DOMAIN;5S RNA GENE;BACKBONE DYNAMICS;RELAXATION