Pulsed Third-Spin-Assisted Recoupling NMR for Obtaining Long-Range 13C-13C and 15N-13C Distance Restraints Martin D. Gelenter, Aurelio J. Dregni, and Mei Hong* Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 170 Albany Street, Cambridge, MA 02139 * Corresponding author: Mei Hong:
[email protected] Abstract We introduce a class of pulsed third-spin-assisted recoupling (P-TSAR) magic-angle-spinning (MAS) solid-state NMR techniques that achieve efficient polarization transfer over long distances to provide important restraints for structure determination. These experiments operate with the same principle as continuous-wave (CW) TSAR experiments, by utilizing second-order cross terms between strong 1H-13C and 1H-15N dipolar couplings to achieve 13C-13C and 13C-15N polarization transfer. However, in contrast to the CW-TSAR experiments, these pulsed P-TSAR experiments require much less radiofrequency (rf) energy and allow a much simpler routine for optimizing the rf field strength. We call the techniques PULSAR (PULSed proton Asissted Recoupling) for homonuclear spin pairs and PERSPIRATIONCP (Proton-Enhanced Rotor-echo Short Pulse IRradiATION Cross-Polarization) for heteronuclear spin pairs. We demonstrate these techniques on the model protein GB1, and found cross peaks for distances as long as 10 and 8 Å for 13C-13C and 15N-13C spin pairs, respectively. We also apply these methods to the amyloid fibrils formed by the peptide hormone glucagon, and show that long- range correlation peaks are readily observed to constrain intermolecular packing in this cross-b fibril. We provide an analytical model for the PULSAR and PERSPIRATIONCP experiments to explain the measured and simulated chemical shift dependence and pulse flip angle dependence of polarization transfer.