Studies of protein hydration in aqueous solution by high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy

Individual hydration water molecules in aqueous protein solutions have been observed using experimental schemes for homonuclear two-dimensional and heteronuclear three-dimensional NMR experiments in H₂O solution, which do not require suppression of the solvent line by presaturation. In these experiments, the location of the hydration waters is determined from their nuclear Overhauser effects (NOE s) with individual hydrogen atoms of distinct amino acid residues. In the basic pancreatic trypsin inhibitor (BPTI ), four internal water molecules that had been reported in three different crystal forms were also found to be in the same locations in the solution structure, with lifetimes with respect to exchange of the water protons in excess of 0.3 ns. Additional NOE s with polypeptide protons located on the protein surface may involve either hydration water molecules or hydroxyl protons of amino acid side chains. Their total number is small compared to the number of NOE s expected from the hydration water molecules identified in the crystal structures of BPTI .     

Simultaneous determination of theophylline and caffeine by proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy using partial least squares regression techniques.

A 1H-NMR procedure based on an analysis of its data by a multivariate calibration method was conducted for the simultaneous determination of theophylline and caffeine in synthetic and real samples. Partial least squares regression (PLS) was chosen as the calibration method. The methyl signals of theophilline at 3.36 and 3.54 ppm that overlapped with those of caffeine were significant characteristics which were employed in this study for their analyses. The proposed method was successfully applied to recovery studies of theophylline and caffeine from real tablet samples.     

A study by ultraviolet spectroscopy on the self-association of diazines in aqueous solution

The self-association of pyridazine and pyrazine was studied in aqueous solution at acidic, neutral and basic pH values, by ultraviolet spectroscopy. The spectra of pyridazine in the mid-ultraviolet region did not show any variation in molar absorptivity upon concentration of this compound, indicating that self-association is not important. By contrast, deviations from Beer-Lambert law with increasing concentration were found in pyrazine at the pH values studied. A single hypochromic effect was detected at pH<0, 0.6 and 11.0, while a double hypochromic effect was observed at pH 6.9. These results were interpreted in terms of self-association of pyrazine leading to the formation of dimers at acidic and basic pH, and of dimers and polymers at neutral pH. From the fitting of the experimental curves of hypochromic effects, self-association constants were calculated. The self-association of 3-methylpyridazine, 2-methylpyrazine, and 2,3-dimethylpyrazine was also analyzed, concluding that the introduction of a methyl group has no influence upon the self-association of the pyridazine ring, but the self-association of pyrazine is enhanced by the introduction of two methyl groups. A comparative discussion of the self-association behavior of pyridazine, pyrazine and pyrimidine in aqueous solution has been carried out in terms of the differences in the molecular structure of the three diazines.     

Reexamination of reduced pteridine cofactors behaviour by proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and mass spectrometry

In aqueous solutions, the autoxidation by air of 2-amino-4-hydroxy-6,7-dimethyl-5,6,7,8-tetra-hydropteridine, a hydroxylase cofactor, leads to the corresponding 7,8-dihydro derivate. Oxidation by hydrogen peroxide and Horseradish peroxidase does not give a stable quinonoid form as previously claimed but affords two metabolic products. Kinetics of the two pathways and structures of the different final compounds were determined by ¹H nmr and mass spectrometry.     

Salt-induced micellization of a triblock copolymer in aqueous solution: a 1H nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy study

An aqueous micellar solution of a PEO-PPO-PEO triblock copolymer, pluronic F88 (EO103PO39EO103), in the presence of salt (KCl) has been investigated by 1H NMR spectroscopy. The hydrogen-bonding structure in water is directly changed by the strong polarization effect of added salt, which indirectly weakens the interaction of polymer molecules with water. Both EO and PO blocks are dehydrated by the addition of salt in a similar way, whereas the solubility of the PO blocks may be affected in a more pronounced way, which results in the decrease of the critical micellization temperature (CMT). It is found that the addition of salt favors a more compact micellar core, where the water content is decreased and an effective PO-PO interaction is increased. Increasing the salt concentration would result in a decrease in the number of gauche conformers in the PPO chain, which may be the deeper reason for the decreasing solubility of PPO segments in aqueous salt solution. The temperature region over which the micellization occurs is broad, indicating that micelles and unimers coexist over an extended temperature range, whereas this transition region is significantly narrowed by the addition of salt. The addition of salt offers a good substitute way of changing the temperature to induce micellization. The critical micellization salt concentration (CMSC) is determined to be 1.0 mol l-1 for KCl in 2.5% aqueous pluronic F88 solution at 25 degrees C, and the transition region in which both free and associated copolymer molecules coexist is defined to range from 1 to 2 mol L-1.     

Accurate size determination of PS latex nanoparticles in aqueous solution using pulsed field gradient nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy

The accurate size determination of nanoparticles in solution is an important subject in nano/bio-technologies. However, interactions between particles induce a significant misinterpretation of the size determination by PFG-NMR method. In the sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) aqueous solution, we observed the significant change of the apparent size of PS-latex that depended on the concentration of SDS. In this Letter, accurate size determination of PS latex was carried out by extrapolation methods varying both the concentrations of the PS latex and the SDS in aqueous solution. The proposed method makes it possible to compare the determined sizes of nanoparticles in the liquid-phase by PFG-NMR to those by differential mobility analyzer (DMA) in the gas-phase.     

Nitrogen nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Nitrogen-15 and proton chemical shifts of methylanilines and methylanilinium ions

Nitrogen and carbon electron densities of the toluidines and xylidines have been recalculated by the INDO method; previously published errors have been corrected. Although the nitrogen-15 chemical shifts of these compounds still display the earlier suggested correlation with σ and total electron densities, the calculated inverse correlation with proton electron densities has been shown to be incorrect. Methyl proton chemical shifts of these compounds display no meaningful correlation with the nitrogen shifts. The nitrogen chemical shifts of the toluidinium and xylidinium ions correlate moderately well with the ¹³C chemical shifts of the analogous di- and tri-methylbenzenes.     

Quality evaluation and species differentiation of Rhizoma coptidis by using proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy

Rhizoma coptidis, a broadly used traditional Chinese medicine, derives from the dried rhizomes of Coptis chinensis Franch, Coptis deltoidea C.Y. Cheng et Hsiao and Coptis teeta Wall. Quantitative determination of protoberberine alkaloids in R. coptidis is critical for controlling its quality. In this study, a rapid, simple and accurate quantitative ¹H NMR (qNMR) method was developed for simultaneous determination of berberine, jatrorrhizine, epiberberine, coptisine, palmatine and columbamine in R. coptidis from the three species. Method validation was performed in terms of selectivity, precision, repeatability, stability, accuracy, robustness and linearity. The average recoveries obtained were in the range of 96.9–102.4% for all the six alkaloids. In addition, the qNMR data were analyzed with analysis of variance (ANOVA), hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA) and principal component analysis (PCA), and the results showed that the contents of the active alkaloids have significant difference among the three species. Compared with the conventional HPLC approach, the proposed qNMR method was demonstrated to be a powerful tool for quantifying the six alkaloids due to its unique advantages of high robustness, rapid analysis time and no need of standard compounds for calibration curves preparation. These findings indicate that this method has potential as a reliable method for quality evaluation of herb medicines, especially for protoberberine alkaloid-containing ones.     

Conformational studies of cyclic pentapeptides by proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy

The proton magnetic resonance spectra of c-(-Gly-L -Ala-Gly-Gly-L -Pro-) (I) and four analogous cyclopentapeptides are presented. At ambient temperature the spectra contain two sets of resonances which correspond to two different molecular conformations of the peptides. The relative concentrations of the two forms depend on the peptide, the solvent, and the temperature. For the two molecular species of peptide I in DMSO solution, the NMR. data imply that the peptide linkage involving the nitrogen of proline is respectively in the cis- and the trans-form, and both conformations contain intramolecular hydrogen bridges. Replacement of L -alanine in I by L -cysteine leaves the molecular conformations essentially unalteed. On the other hand substitution of L -proline by L -proline, or replacement of the two glycines in positions 3 and 4 by two sarcosyl residues gives rise to markedly different types of peptide backbone conformation.     

Conformational analysis of rigid enol-ethers by proton nuclear magnetic resonance

Z,E isomers of rigid enol-ethers were studied by proton nuclear magnetic resonance. As with oximes, it was found that the chemical shift difference (Δδ=δ_z?δ_E) for the protons α to the function in question depends on the dihedral angle between the C_α? H and C?C bonds. This phenomenon can be explained by an electric field effect and not by a magnetic anisotropy effect. The present study has allowed the derivation of values of the volume magnetic susceptibility and the product of b×the dipole moment for the C? O bond.     

Quantitative analysis of malic and citric acids in fruit juices using proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy

¹H NMR spectroscopy was applied to the quantitative determination of malic and citric acids in apple, apricot, pear, kiwi, orange, strawberry and pineapple juices. Aspartic acid was studied as a potential interference. The effect of the sample pH on the chemical shifts of signals from malic, citric and aspartic acids was examined and a value of 1.0 was selected to carry out the determination. Integration of NMR signals at 2.89-2.95 and 3.00-3.04 ppm were used for calculating the concentration of malic and citric acids, respectively. At this pH the integrated signals were not overlapped. Sodium 3-(trimethylsilyl)tetradeuteropropionate (TSP) was used as an internal reference. The obtained results applying NMR procedures to analyze the juices from different fruits were compared to those obtained using enzymatic methods and both were in close agreement. The intra- and inter-day repeatability was tested for apple juice (7.86 g l⁻¹ malic acid, 0.32 g l⁻¹ citric acid) and apricot juice (5.06 g l⁻¹ malic acid, 4.79 g l⁻¹ citric acid) obtaining coefficients of variation lower than 3.4% for intra-day measures (n = 10) and lower than 3.8% for inter-day measures (n = 20).     

Theory of covariance nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy

Covariance nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy provides an effective way for establishing nuclear spin connectivities in molecular systems. The method, which identifies correlated spin dynamics in terms of covariances between 1D spectra, benefits from a high spectral resolution along the indirect dimension without requiring apodization and Fourier transformation along this dimension. The theoretical treatment of covariance NMR spectroscopy is given for NOESY and TOCSY experiments. It is shown that for a large class of 2D NMR experiments the covariance spectrum and the 2D Fourier transform spectrum can be related to each other by means of Parseval's theorem. A general procedure is presented for the construction of a symmetric spectrum with improved resolution along the indirect frequency domain as compared to the 2D FT spectrum.