ABSTRACT
The cellular membrane disruption induced by the aggregation of Aß peptide has been proposed as a plausible cause of neuronal cell death during Alzheimer's disease. The molecular-level details of the Aß interaction with cellular membranes were previously probed using solid state NMR (ssNMR), however, due to the limited sensitivity of the latter, studies were limited to samples with high Aß-to-lipid ratio. The dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) is a technique for increasing the sensitivity of NMR. In this work we demonstrate the feasibility of DNP-enhanced ssNMR studies of Aß40 peptide interacting with various model liposomes: (1) a mixture of zwitterionic 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-glycero-3-phosphocholine (POPC) and negatively charged 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phospho-(1'-rac-glycerol) (POPG); (2) a mixture of POPC, POPG, cholesterol, sphingomyelin and ganglioside GM1; (3) the synaptic plasma membrane vesicles (SPMVs) extracted from rat brain tissues. In addition, DNP-ssNMR was applied to capturing changes in Aß40 conformation taking place upon the peptide insertion into POPG liposomes. The signal enhancements under conditions of DNP allow carrying out informative 2D ssNMR experiments with about 0.25 mg of Aß40 peptides (i.e. reaching Aß40-to-lipid ratio of 1:200). In the studied liposome models, the 13C NMR chemical shifts at many 13C-labelled sites of Aß40 are characteristic of ß-sheets. In addition, in POPG liposomes the peptide forms hydrophobic contacts F19-L34 and F19-I32. Both the chemical shifts and hydrophobic contacts of Aß40 in POPG remain the same before and after 8 h of incubation. This suggests that conformation at the 13C-labelled sites of the peptide is similar before and after the insertion process. Overall, our results demonstrate that DNP helps to overcome the sensitivity limitation of ssNMR, and thereby expand the applicability of ssNMR for charactering the Aß peptide interacting with lipids.