The development of 15N, 13C,
2H multidimensional NMR spectroscopy has facilitated
the
assignment of backbone and side chain resonances of proteins and
protein complexes with molecular
masses of over 30 kDa. The success of these methods has been
achieved through the production of
highly deuterated proteins; replacing carbon-bound protons with
deuterons significantly improves the
sensitivity of many of the experiments used in chemical shift
assignment. Unfortunately, uniform
deuteration also radically depletes the number of interproton distance
restraints available for structure
determination, degrading the quality of the resulting structures.
Here we describe an approach for improving
the precision and accuracy of global folds determined from highly
deuterated proteins through the use of
deuterated, selectively methyl-protonated samples. This labeling
profile maintains the efficiency of triple-resonance NMR experiments while retaining a sufficient number of protons
at locations where they can
be used to establish NOE-based contacts between different elements of
secondary structure. We evaluate
how this deuteration scheme affects the sensitivity and resolution of
experiments used to assign 15N,
13C,
and 1H chemical shifts and interproton NOEs. This
approach is tested experimentally on a 14 kDa SH2/phosphopeptide complex, and a global protein fold is obtained from a set
of methyl−methyl, methyl−NH, and NH−NH distance restraints. We demonstrate that the
inclusion of methyl−NH and methyl−methyl distance restraints greatly improves the precision and accuracy
of structures relative to those
generated with only NH−NH distance restraints. Finally, we
examine the general applicability of this
approach by determining the structures of several proteins with
molecular masses of up to 40 kDa from
simulated distance and dihedral angle restraint tables.