MUSIC in Triple-Resonance Experiments: Amino Acid Type-Selective 1H-15N Correlations

M. Schubert, M. Smalla, P. Schmieder, H. Oschkinat

J. Magn. Reson. (1999) 141, 34-43

Amino acid type-selective triple-resonance experiments can be of great help for the assignment of protein spectra, since they help to remove ambiguities in either manual or automated assignment procedures. Here, modified triple-resonance experiments that yield amino acid type-selective 1H-15N correlations are presented. They are based on novel coherence transfer schemes, the MUSIC pulse sequence elements, that replace the initial INEPT transfer and are selective for XH2 or XH3 (X can be 15N or 13C). The desired amino acid type is thereby selected based on the topology of the side chain. Experiments for Gly (G-HSQC); Ala (A-HSQC); Thr, Val, Ile, and Ala (TAVI-HSQC); Thr and Ala (TA-HSQC), as well as Asn and Gln (N-HSQC and QN-HSQC), are described. The new experiments are recorded as two-dimensional experiments and therefore need only small amounts of spectrometer time. The performance of the experiments is demonstrated with the application to two protein domains.