Solid-state 17O NMR as a probe for structural studies of proteins in biomembranes.
Lemaître V., de Planque MRR., Howes AP., Smith ME., Dupree R., Watts A.
We report the first example of 17O NMR spectra from a selectively labeled transmembrane peptide, 17O-[Ala12]-WALP23, as a lyophilized powder and incorporated in hydrated phospholipid vesicles. It is shown that at high magnetic field it is feasible to apply 17O NMR to the study of membrane-incorporated peptides. Furthermore, we were able to estimate distances within the selectively labeled WALP peptide, which represents a consensus transmembrane protein sequence. This work opens up new applications of 17O solid-state NMR on biological systems.