Monitoring N-15 Chemical Shifts During Protein Folding by Pressure-Jump NMR

Pressure-jump hardware permits direct observation of protein NMR spectra during a cyclically repeated protein folding process. For a two-state folding protein, the change in resonance frequency will occur nearly instantaneously when the protein clears the transition state barrier, resulting in a monoexponential change of the ensemble-averaged chemical shift. However, protein folding pathways can be more complex and contain metastable intermediates. With a pseudo-3D NMR experiment that utilizes stroboscopic observation, we measure the ensemble-averaged chemical shifts, including those of exchange-broadened intermediates, during the folding process. Such measurements for a pressure-sensitized mutant of ubiquitin show an on-pathway kinetic intermediate whose N-15 chemical shifts differ most from the natively folded protein for strands beta 5, its preceding turn, and the two strands that pair with beta 5 in the native structure.