NMR conformational properties of an Anthrax Lethal Factor domain studied by multiple amino acid-selective labeling

Highlights: • A polypeptide, N-ALF₂₃₃, was overexpressed in E. coli and successfully isolated. • We produced ²H/¹⁵N/¹³C labeled protein samples. • Amino acid selective approaches were applied. • We acquired several heteronuclear NMR spectra, to complete the backbone assignment. • Prediction of the secondary structure was performed. - Abstract: NMR-based structural biology urgently needs cost- and time-effective methods to assist both in the process of acquiring high-resolution NMR spectra and their subsequent analysis. Especially for bigger proteins (>20 kDa) selective labeling is a frequently used means of sequence-specific assignment. In this work we present the successful overexpression of a polypeptide of 233 residues, corresponding to the structured part of the N-terminal domain of Anthrax Lethal Factor, using Escherichia coli expression system. The polypeptide was subsequently isolated in pure, soluble form and analyzed structurally by solution NMR spectroscopy. Due to the non-satisfying quality and resolution of the spectra of this 27 kDa protein, an almost complete backbone assignment became feasible only by the combination of uniform and novel amino acid-selective labeling schemes. Moreover, amino acid-type selective triple-resonance NMR experiments proved to be very helpful