[NMR paper] Solid-state NMR studies of the secondary structure of a mutant prion protein fragment

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Solid-state NMR studies of the secondary structure of a mutant prion protein fragment of 55 residues that induces neurodegeneration.

Related Articles Solid-state NMR studies of the secondary structure of a mutant prion protein fragment of 55 residues that induces neurodegeneration.

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2001 Sep 25;98(20):11686-90

Authors: Laws DD, Bitter HM, Liu K, Ball HL, Kaneko K, Wille H, Cohen FE, Prusiner SB, Pines A, Wemmer DE

The secondary structure of a 55-residue fragment of the mouse prion protein, MoPrP(89-143), was studied in randomly aggregated (dried from water) and fibrillar (precipitated from water/acetonitrile) forms by (13)C solid-state NMR. Recent studies have shown that the fibrillar form of the P101L mutant of MoPrP(89-143) is capable of inducing prion disease in transgenic mice, whereas unaggregated or randomly aggregated samples do not provoke disease. Through analysis of (13)C chemical shifts, we have determined that both wild-type and mutant sequence MoPrP(89-143) form a mixture of beta-sheet and alpha-helical conformations in the randomly aggregated state although the beta-sheet content in MoPrP(89-143, P101L) is significantly higher than in the wild-type peptide. In a fibrillar state, MoPrP(89-143, P101L) is completely converted into beta-sheet, suggesting that the formation of a specific beta-sheet structure may be required for the peptide to induce disease. Studies of an analogous peptide from Syrian hamster PrP verify that sequence alterations in residues 101-117 affect the conformation of aggregated forms of the peptides.

PMID: 11562491 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]



Source: PubMed