The molecular determinants for selectivity of ligand binding to membrane receptors are of key importance for the understanding of cellular signalling, as well as for rational therapeutic intervention. In the present study, we target the interaction between the kappa opioid receptor (KOR) and its native peptide ligand dynorphin A (DynA) using solution state NMR spectroscopy, which is generally made difficult by the sheer size of membrane bound receptors. Our method is based on 'transplantation' of an extracellular loop of KOR into a 'surrogate' scaffold; in this case, a soluble beta-barrel. Our results corroborate the general feasibility of the method, showing that the inserted receptor segment has negligible effects on the properties of the scaffold protein, at the same time as maintaining an ability to bind its native DynA ligand. Upon DynA binding, only small induced chemical shift changes of the KOR loop were observed, whereas chemical shift changes of DynA and NMR paramagnetic relaxation data show conclusively that the peptide interacts with the inserted loop. The binding interface is composed of a disordered part of the KOR loop and involves both electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions. Even so, simultaneous effects along the DynA sequence upon binding show that control of the recognition is a concerted event.

The membrane interaction properties of two single-residue variants, R6W and L5S, of the 17-amino acid neuropeptide dynorphin A (DynA) were studied by circular dichroism (CD) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Corresponding gene mutations have recently been discovered in humans and causatively linked to a neurodegenerative disorder. The peptides were investigated in buffer and in isotropic solutions of q = 0.3 bicelles with 1,2-dimyristoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DMPC) or DMPC (0.8) and 1,2-dimyristoyl-sn-glycero-3-phospho(1'-rac-glycerol) (DMPG) (0.2). The CD results and the NMR secondary chemical shifts show that R6W-DynA has a small a-helical fraction in buffer, which increases in the presence of bicelles, while L5S-DynA is mainly unstructured under all conditions studied here. R6W-DynA has an almost complete association with zwitterionic bicelles (similar to 90%, as probed by NMR diffusion experiments), similar to the behavior of wtDynA, while L5S-DynA has a weaker association (similar to 50%). For all peptides, the level of bicelle association is increased in negatively charged bicelles. The L5A-DynA peptide adopts a very shallow position in the headgroup region of the bicelle bilayer, as studied by paramagnetic spin relaxation enhancement experiments using paramagnetic probes. Similarly, the results show that R6W-DynA is more deeply buried in the bilayer, with only the C-terminal residues exposed to solvent, again more similar to the case of wild-type DynA. We suggest that the results presented here may explain the differences in cell toxicity of these disease-related neuropeptide variants.

Mixtures of lipids and detergents are known to form bicelles at certain parameter ranges, but many un-certainties remain concerning the details of the phase be-haviour of these mixtures and the morphology of the formed lipid assemblies. Here we used NMR diffusion data in com-bination with the multivariate processing method SCORE to analyze mixtures of DHPC and DMPC with the relative concentration q=[DMPC]/[DHPC]=0.5 at total lipid con-centrations from 15 to 300 mM. With this approach we were able to resolve the heavily overlapping mixture spectra into component spectra and obtained reliable diffusion coeffi-cients for lipid concentrations in the range 15 to 200 mM. Between 200 and 300 mM, the similar diffusion coefficients in combination with substantial signal overlap makes it difficult to get very reliable spectra and diffusion coeffi-cients with standard processing parameters, but overfactoring provided useful diffusion coefficient estimates also at these concentrations. At 50–300 mM total lipid concentration, the radii estimated from the diffusion coeffi-cient of DMPC indicate assemblies of the appropriate bicelle size, although small size variations exist, while at lower concentrations the morphology appears to change to larger assemblies. Taken together, the results suggest that for q=0.5 DMPC/DHPC mixtures there is a relatively broad concentration range above 50 mM where bicelles may relia-bly be assumed to adopt the 'classical' bicelle morphology. At lower concentrations there is evidence for a more com-plex morphology with more than one type of lipid assembly in the sample.

Complex mixtures are at the heart of biology, and biomacromolecules almost always exhibit their function in a mixture, e.g., the mode of action for a spider venom is typically dependent on a cocktail of compounds, not just the protein. Information about diseases is encoded in body fluids such as urine and plasma in the form of metabolite concentrations determined by the actions of enzymes. To understand better what is happening in real living systems we urgently need better methods to characterize such mixtures. In this paper we describe a potent way to disentangle the NMR spectra of mixture components, by exploiting data that vary independently in three or more dimensions, allowing the use of powerful algorithms to decompose the data to extract the information sought. The particular focus of this paper is on NMR diffusion data, which are typically bilinear but can be extended by a third dimension to give the desired data structure.

The influence of lipid bicelles on the dynamics of the opioid peptide DynA has been investigated by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. DynA exerts its opioid effects mainly through interactions with the κ subtype of the opioid receptors, but has also been demonstrated to have direct interactions with membranes. Among other properties, it has been shown that the peptide causes membrane disruption and may penetrate bilayers. Despite the fact that DynA appears to bind tightly to model lipid bilayers, no structure induction has been observed. To further study the effect of membrane interactions we have here therefore measured the fast local dynamics of DynA specifically labeled with ¹⁵N in three backbone amide sites (Gly2, Leu5 and Leu12) in fast-tumbling bicelles, both with and without the incorporation of the negatively charged dimyristoylglycerol. We also examined the amide exchange in the two bicelles. We find that despite the fact that DynA is largely unstructured in both types of bicelles, the peptide has restricted backbone dynamics, which depends on the presence of negatively charged lipids. Moreover we see that the lipid dependence is not uniform throughout the sequence, but is most noticeable for Leu5, which precedes an unusually basic stretch of amino acid residues. The findings indicate that this basic sequence may be of significance for bilayer recognition. Finally, we note that the dynamical behavior of the peptide is much more influenced by the lipid surroundings than what the structural properties are.