Functions of biological macromolecules, including enzyme catalysis, allostery, and ligand recognition, in some circumstances can be rate-limited by dynamic processes that couple nonproductive and productive conformations. 1,2 Delineating the amplitudes, rates, and mechanisms of these motions is necessary to explicate biological function. 3-5 This paper describes a modified protondetected 15 N Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill 6,7 (CPMG) spin-echo pulse sequence that overcomes the disadvantages associated with pulsing rates comparable to the one-bond J NH scalar coupling constant. The new experiment permits measurement of chemical or conformational exchange time constants from approximately 0.5 to 5 ms. This range of time scales fills an important gap between microsecond time scales that are accessible by the offresonance rotating-frame experiment 8,9 and millisecond time scales that are accessible by the zz-exchange experiment. [10][11][12] Conformational or chemical kinetic processes that transfer a nuclear spin between sites with different magnetic environments contribute to the adiabatic decay of transverse magnetization. The phenomenological transverse relaxation rate constant measured in a CPMG experiment, R 2 (τ cp ), is given by:in which τ cp is the delay between pulses in the spin-echo pulse train; R in and R anti are the transverse relaxation rate constants for in-phase and antiphase coherences averaged over the populations of each chemical or conformational state, respectively; 0 e e 1 reflects the averaging between in-phase and antiphase coherences due to evolution under the scalar coupling Hamiltonian during τ cp ; 13-15 and R ex is the rate constant for damping due to exchange between sites. For two exchanging sites 16 in which Φ ex ) (ω 1 -ω 2 ) 2 p 1 p 2 ; and p i and ω i are the populations and Larmor frequencies for the nuclear spin in site i; and τ ex is the reduced lifetime of the exchanging sites.In principle, exchange kinetics can be determined by fitting eqs 1 and 2 to R 2 (τ cp ) data obtained for different values of τ cp ; however, both and R ex depend on τ cp , which renders the analysis intractable. This difficulty is circumvented if τ cp is limited to small values (<1/(4J NH )), because ≈ 1. 17 In this case, only fast exchange processes can be studied, and the resulting high radio frequency duty cycle poses a significant drawback compared with the off-resonance rotating-frame experiment. 8,9 Broadband proton decoupling during τ cp prevents evolution of in-phase into antiphase magnetization and makes ) 1; however, decoupling interferes with spin-echo formation and accentuates the decay of transverse magnetization. 14,15,18 In the approach adopted herein, the rate constants for in-phase and antiphase coherences are averaged explicitly during the CPMG sequence to render ) 0.5 for all τ cp . Application of the experiment to basic pancreatic trypsin inhibitor (BPTI) confirms the effectiveness of the proposed averaging procedure for values of τ cp as large as 2/J NH .The modified CPMG pulse sequenc...
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.