G-matrix Fourier transform NOESY-based protocol for high-quality protein structure determination

A protocol for high-quality structure determination based on G-matrix Fourier transform (GFT) NMR is presented. Five through-bond chemical shift correlation experiments providing 4D and 5D spectral information at high digital resolution are performed for resonance assignment. These are combined with a newly implemented (4,3)D GFT NOESY experiment which encodes information of 4D N-15/N-15(-), C-13(alipahtic)/ N-15-, and C-13(aliphatic)/C-13(aliphatic)-resolved [H-1,H-1]-NOESY in two subspectra, each containing one component of chemical shift doublets arising from 4D -> 3D projection at omega(1):Omega(H-1) +/- Omega(X) [X = N-15, C-13(aliphatic)]. The peaks located at the centers of the doublets are obtained from simultaneous 3D N-15/C-13(aliplatic)/ C-13(aromatic)-resolved [H-1,H-1]-NOESY, wherein NOES detected on aromatic protons are also obtained. The protocol was applied for determining a high-quality structure of the 14 kDa Northeast Structural Genomics consortium target protein, YqfB (PDB ID 1TE7). Through-bond correlation and NOESY spectra were acquired, respectively, in 16.9 and 39 h (30 h for shift doublets, 9 h for central peaks) on a 600 MHz spectrometer equipped with a cryogenic probe. The rapidly collected highly resolved 4D NOESY information allows one to assign the majority of NOES directly from chemical shifts, which yields accurate initial structures "within" similar to 2 angstrom of the final structure. Information theoretical "QUEEN" analysis of initial distance limit constraint networks revealed that, in contrast to structure-based protocols, such NOE assignment is not biased toward identifying additional constraints that tend to be redundant with respect to the available constraint network. The protocol enables rapid NMR data collection for robust high-quality structure determination of proteins up to similar to 20-25 kDa in high-throughput.