NMR STUDY OF PROTEIN POTENTIALLY INVOLVED IN MOLYBDOPTERIN SYNTHESIS

 

A. Pavelková, P. Macek and Lukáš Žídek

 

National Centre for Biomolecular Research, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, 611 37 Brno

 

Molecule of interest, TA1019, is a protein possibly involved in molybdopterin synthesis. It consists of 107 amino acid residues. Structural study of TA1019 represents a part of proteomic project of a prokaryote organism,  Thermoplasma acidophilum. The recombinant protein TA1019 was prepared at the University of Toronto, Canada, by Adelinda Yee and coworkers. Aggregation and low stability of the sample excluded this project from automatically performed structural investigation. Due to this fact, the sample was offered to our laboratory and subjected to careful structure elucidation by NMR. At the present time, were made first basic steps in the course of structural determination, i.e., assignment of the measured frequencies to the individual atoms of the protein molecule. The obtained backbone sequential assignment and partial side chain assignment is a necessary prerequisite for 3D structure determination. In addition, knowledge of resonance frequencies of certain nuclei permits preliminary secondary structure prediction.