Reversal of order of chemical shifts. Differential solvent effects in the hydrogen shifts of toluene,m-xylene ando-xylene as determined by 320 MHz tritium NMR spectroscopy

Background: Nanobodies, or VHHs, are derived from heavy chain-only antibodies (hcAbs) found in camelids. They overcome some of the inherent limitations of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and derivatives thereof, due to their smaller molecular size and higher stability, and thus present an alternative to mAbs for therapeutic use. Two nanobodies, Nb23 and Nb24, have been shown to similarly inhibit the self-aggregation of very amyloidogenic variants of β2-microglobulin. Here, the structure of Nb23 was modeled with the Chemical-Shift (CS)-Rosetta server using chemical shift assignments from nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy experiments, and used as prior knowledge in PONDEROSA restrained modeling based on experimentally assessed internuclear distances. Further validation was comparatively obtained with the results of molecular dynamics trajectories calculated from the resulting best energy-minimized Nb23 conformers. Methods: 2D and 3D NMR spectroscopy experiments were carried out to determine the assignment of the backbone and side chain hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon resonances to extract chemical shifts and interproton separations for restrained modeling. Results: The solution structure of isolated Nb23 nanobody was determined. Conclusions: The structural analysis indicated that isolated Nb23 has a dynamic CDR3 loop distributed over different orientations with respect to Nb24, which could determine differences in target antigen affinity or complex lability.

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Resolving Entangled JH-H-Coupling Patterns for Steroidal Structure Determinations by NMR Spectroscopy

Molecules ◽

10.3390/molecules26092643 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 26 (9) ◽

pp. 2643

Author(s):

Danni Wu ◽

Kathleen Joyce Carillo ◽

Jiun-Jie Shie ◽

Steve S.-F. Yu ◽

Der-Lii M. Tzou

Keyword(s):

Nmr Spectroscopy ◽

1H Nmr Spectroscopy ◽

Chemical Shifts ◽

Atomic Level ◽

Molecular Structures ◽

Naturally Occurring ◽

Structure Determinations ◽

Ligand Interactions ◽

Synthetic Steroids ◽

The Individual

For decades, high-resolution 1H NMR spectroscopy has been routinely utilized to analyze both naturally occurring steroid hormones and synthetic steroids, which play important roles in regulating physiological functions in humans. Because the 1H signals are inevitably superimposed and entangled with various JH–H splitting patterns, such that the individual 1H chemical shift and associated JH–H coupling identities are hardly resolved. Given this, applications of thess information for elucidating steroidal molecular structures and steroid/ligand interactions at the atomic level were largely restricted. To overcome, we devoted to unraveling the entangled JH–H splitting patterns of two similar steroidal compounds having fully unsaturated protons, i.e., androstanolone and epiandrosterone (denoted as 1 and 2, respectively), in which only hydroxyl and ketone substituents attached to C3 and C17 were interchanged. Here we demonstrated that the JH–H values deduced from 1 and 2 are universal and applicable to other steroids, such as testosterone, 3β, 21-dihydroxygregna-5-en-20-one, prednisolone, and estradiol. On the other hand, the 1H chemical shifts may deviate substantially from sample to sample. In this communication, we propose a simple but novel scheme for resolving the complicate JH–H splitting patterns and 1H chemical shifts, aiming for steroidal structure determinations.

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