0000000000462734
AUTHOR
Erik Strandberg
Experiments Meet Hydrophobic Mismatch: A Re-evaluation Of The Orientation Of Model Transmembrane Peptides From Solid-State NMR
The basic physical rules underlying the organization of biological membranes can be gathered under the simple, but powerful, concept of hydrophobic mismatch. For example, the mutual adjustment of the lipid and protein hydrophobic lengths can be related with the existence of lipid rafts and explain discrete secretory pathways in the Golgi apparatus. The orientation of membrane protein fragments is predicted to follow the same hydrophobic mismatch principles, as illustrated by some experiments and molecular dynamics simulations. However, this appears to be challenged by results of solid-state 2H NMR experiments on model transmembrane peptides, displaying tilt angle values unexpectedly small a…
Solid state NMR analysis of peptides in membranes: Influence of dynamics and labeling scheme.
The functional state of a membrane-active peptide is often defined by its conformation, molecular orientation, and its oligomeric state in the lipid bilayer. These "static" structural properties can be routinely studied by solid state NMR using isotope-labeled peptides. In the highly dynamic environment of a liquid crystalline biomembrane, however, the whole-body fluctuations of a peptide are also of paramount importance, although difficult to address and most often ignored. Yet it turns out that disregarding such motional averaging in calculating the molecular alignment from orientational NMR-constraints may give a misleading, if not false picture of the system. Here, we demonstrate that t…
Influence of Whole-Body Dynamics on 15N PISEMA NMR Spectra of Membrane Proteins: A Theoretical Analysis
AbstractMembrane proteins and peptides exhibit a preferred orientation in the lipid bilayer while fluctuating in an anisotropic manner. Both the orientation and the dynamics have direct functional implications, but motions are usually not accessible, and structural descriptions are generally static. Using simulated data, we analyze systematically the impact of whole-body motions on the peptide orientations calculated from two-dimensional polarization inversion spin exchange at the magic angle (PISEMA) NMR. Fluctuations are found to have a significant effect on the observed spectra. Nevertheless, wheel-like patterns are still preserved, and it is possible to determine the average peptide til…
Hydrophobic mismatch of mobile transmembrane helices: Merging theory and experiments
Abstract Hydrophobic mismatch still represents a puzzle for transmembrane peptides, despite the apparent simplicity of this concept and its demonstrated validity in natural membranes. Using a wealth of available experimental 2 H NMR data, we provide here a comprehensive explanation of the orientation and dynamics of model peptides in lipid bilayers, which shows how they can adapt to membranes of different thickness. The orientational adjustment of transmembrane α-helices can be understood as the result of a competition between the thermodynamically unfavorable lipid repacking associated with peptide tilting and the optimization of peptide/membrane hydrophobic coupling. In the positive misma…
Influence of Dynamics on The Analysis of Solid-State NMR Data From Membrane-bound Peptides
By isotope labeling of membrane-bound peptides, typically with 2H, 19F, or 15N, solid-state NMR experiments can yield data from which the orientation of peptides in a native membrane environment can be determined. Such an orientation is defined by a tilt angle and an azimuthal rotation angle.Here we show that to obtain correct values of the orientation angles, it is important to include dynamics in the analysis of the NMR data. Nevertheless the effects of dynamics are different depending on the type of isotope labeling and NMR experiment considered.To analyze the influence of dynamics in detail, we generated virtual NMR observables using a model peptide undergoing explicit Gaussian fluctuat…
Canonical azimuthal rotations and flanking residues constrain the orientation of transmembrane helices.
AbstractIn biological membranes the alignment of embedded proteins provides crucial structural information. The transmembrane (TM) parts have well-defined secondary structures, in most cases α-helices and their orientation is given by a tilt angle and an azimuthal rotation angle around the main axis. The tilt angle is readily visualized and has been found to be functionally relevant. However, there exist no general concepts on the corresponding azimuthal rotation. Here, we show that TM helices prefer discrete rotation angles. They arise from a combination of intrinsic properties of the helix geometry plus the influence of the position and type of flanking residues at both ends of the hydrop…
Orientation and Dynamics of Peptides in Membranes Calculated from 2H-NMR Data
Solid-state (2)H-NMR is routinely used to determine the alignment of membrane-bound peptides. Here we demonstrate that it can also provide a quantitative measure of the fluctuations around the distinct molecular axes. Using several dynamic models with increasing complexity, we reanalyzed published (2)H-NMR data on two representative alpha-helical peptides: 1), the amphiphilic antimicrobial peptide PGLa, which permeabilizes membranes by going from a monomeric surface-bound to a dimeric tilted state and finally inserting as an oligomeric pore; and 2), the hydrophobic WALP23, which is a typical transmembrane segment, although previous analysis had yielded helix tilt angles much smaller than ex…