Oral Presentation 23rd International Society of Magnetic Resonance Conference 2023

Biomolecular electrostatics by NMR spectroscopy (#133)

Junji Iwahara 1
  1. University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TEXAS, United States

Biomolecular electrostatics has been a subject of analysis subsequent to 3D structure determination. This situation is changing due to NMR methods we developed in the past few years [1-4].  These NMR methods allow us to quantitatively investigate biomolecular electrostatics without any use of structure information. Now, local electrostatic potentials can directly be measured for every residue of proteins and nucleic acids by these methods. The new electrostatic methods are applicable to various biomolecular processes, including protein-DNA association and liquid-liquid phase separation. Applications to intrinsically disordered proteins and conformationally flexible nucleic acids are particularly useful because structure-based analysis of electrostatics is not straightforward for such molecules. These tools also facilitate examination of theoretical models on biomolecular electrostatics.

  1. Yu, B., Pletka, C.C., Pettitt, B.M., Iwahara, J. (2021) De novo determination of near-surface electrostatic potentials by NMR. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 118 (25), e2104020118.
  2. Yu, B., Pletka, C.C., Iwahara, J. (2022) Protein electrostatics investigated through paramagnetic NMR for nonpolar groups. J Phys Chem B 125, 2196-202.
  3. Chen, C., Yu, B., Yousefi, R., Iwahara, J., Pettitt, B.M. (2022) Assessment of the components of the electrostatic potential of proteins in solution: Comparing experiment and theory. J Phys Chem B 126, 4543-54.
  4. Yu, B., Wang, X., Iwahara, J. (2022) Measuring local electrostatic potentials around nucleic acids by paramagnetic NMR spectroscopy. J Phys Chem Lett 13, 10025-9.