NMR paves the way for atomic level descriptions of sparsely populated, transiently formed biomolecular conformers

作者：Sekhar Ashok; Kay Lewis E^*

来源：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013, 110(32): 12867-12874.

DOI：10.1073/pnas.1305688110

• energy landscape
• transiently and sparsely populated biomolecular states
• invisible states
• structure-function paradigm

The importance of dynamics to biomolecular function is becoming increasingly clear. A description of the structure-function relationship must, therefore, include the role of motion, requiring a shift in paradigm from focus on a single static 3D picture to one where a given biomolecule is considered in terms of an ensemble of interconverting conformers, each with potentially diverse activities. In this Perspective, we describe how recent developments in solution NMR spectroscopy facilitate atomic resolution studies of sparsely populated, transiently formed biomolecular conformations that exchange with the native state. Examples of how this methodology is applied to protein folding and misfolding, ligand binding, and molecular recognition are provided as a means of illustrating both the power of the new techniques and the significant roles that conformationally excited protein states play in biology.

• 出版日期2013-8-6