Teichoic acids are essential components of the Gram-positive bacterial cell wall. One of their many functions is metal binding, a vital process for bacterial growth. With the combination of phosphorus-31 solid-state NMR spectroscopy and theoretical calculations using density functional theory (DFT), we have determined that the binding mode between teichoic acids and magnesium involves bidentate coordination by the phosphate groups of teichoic acid. Measurement of chemical shift anisotropy tensors gave a reduced anisotropy (delta) of 49.25 ppm and an asymmetry (eta) of 0.7. DFT calculations with diglycerol phosphate and triglycerol diphosphate model compounds were completed with Mg(2+) in anhydrous as well as partially hydrated bidentate and fully hydrated monodentate, bidentate, and bridging binding modes. (31)P CSA tensors were calculated from the energy-minimized model compounds using the combined DFT and GIAO methods, resulting in dramatically different tensor values for each binding mode. The anhydrous bidentate chelation mode was found to be a good approximation of the experimental data, an observation that alters the current monodentate paradigm for metal chelation by teichoic acids.

The conformation of D-alanine (D-Ala) groups of bacterial teichoic acid is a central, yet untested, paradigm of microbiology. The D-Ala binds via the C-terminus, thereby allowing the amine to exist as a free cationic NH3+ group with the ability to form a contact-ion-pair with the nearby anionic phosphate group. This conformation hinders metal chelation by the phosphate because the zwitterion pair is charge neutral. To the contrary, the repulsion of cationic antimicrobial peptides (CAMPs) is attributed to the presence of the D-Ala cation; thus the ion-pair does not form in this model. Solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has been used to measure the distance between amine and phosphate groups within cell wall fragments of Bacillus subtilis. The bacteria were grown on media containing 15N D-Ala and β-chloroalanine racemase inhibitor. The rotational-echo double-resonance (REDOR) pulse sequence was used to measure the internuclear dipolar coupling and the results demonstrate: 1) the metal-free amine-to-phosphate distance is 4.4 Å and 2) the amine-to-phosphate distance increases to 5.4 Å in the presence of Mg2+ ions. As a result, the zwitterion exists in a nitrogen-oxygen ion-pair configuration providing teichoic acid with a positive charge to repel CAMPs. Additionally, the amine of D-Ala does not prevent magnesium chelation in contradiction to the prevailing view of teichoic acids in metal binding. Thus, the NMR-based description of teichoic acid structure resolves the contradictory models, advances the basic understanding of cell wall biochemistry, and provides possible insight into the creation of new antibiotic therapies.

An effective means of studying biological metal chemistry is through the use of cadmium NMR to probe the interaction between biomolecules, such as proteins and peptides, with divalent metals, such as zinc, copper, magnesium, or calcium. Gram-positive bacteria, such as S. aureus and B. subtilis , have peptidoglycan cell walls that contain teichoic acids, a poly(phosphodiester) biopolymer used for, among other things, metal chelation. Previous solid-state NMR and XAFS studies have shown that the cadmium ion binds in a bidentate manner to the phosphoryl centers of the dried teichoic acid backbone at physiological pH. However, current studies indicate that, when hydrated and at the low concentrations typically found in nature, the cadmium ions and phosphoryl sites interact through an extended solvent-separated ion pairing. These data reveal two unequal P-Cd interactions at distances of 4.2 and 4.9 A set approximately 180 degrees from each other in a linear arrangement.