Critical fluctuations in DOPC/DPPC-d62/cholesterol mixtures: 2H magnetic resonance and relaxation.

Static and magic angle spinning (MAS) (2)H nuclear magnetic resonance experiments have been performed on a series of multilamellar dispersions of di-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine/di-palmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine-d62/cholesterol in water to investigate the compositional fluctuations which occur in the region of the line of critical points for this ternary system. The strong dependence of the MAS line widths on temperature, sample composition, and spinning rate provides a direct measure of the magnitude of the fluctuations in the (2)H quadrupolar Hamiltonian. These data are analyzed in terms of models for critical fluctuations in composition leading to a value for the critical index for the correlation length, ν(c) = 0.628, consistent with a three dimensional Ising model.

Phosphorylation controls the interaction of the connexin43 C-terminal domain with tubulin and microtubules.

Connexins are structurally related transmembrane proteins that assemble to form gap junction channels involved in the mediation of intercellular communication. It has been shown that the intracellular tail of connexin43 (Cx43) interacts with tubulin and microtubules with putative impacts on its own intracellular trafficking, its activity in channel communication, and its interference with specific growth factor signal transduction cascades. We demonstrate here that the microtubule binding of Cx43 is mainly driven by a short region of 26 amino acid residues located within the intracellular tail of Cx43. The nuclear magnetic resonance structural analysis of a peptide (K26D) corresponding to this region shows that this peptide is unstructured when free in solution and adopts a helix conformation upon binding with tubulin. In addition, the resulting K26D-tubulin molecular complex defines a new structural organization that could be shared by other microtubule partners. Interestingly, the K26D-tubulin interaction is prevented by the phosphorylation of K26D at a src kinase specific site. Altogether, the results elucidate the mechanism of the interaction of Cx43 with the microtubule cytoskeleton and propose a pathway for understanding the microtubule-dependent regulation of Cx43 gap junctional communications and the involvement of Cx43 in TGF-ß signal transduction.

Phase equilibria in DOPC/DPPC: Conversion from gel to subgel in two component mixtures.

Biological membranes contain a mixture of phospholipids with varying degrees of hydrocarbon chain unsaturation. Mixtures of long chain saturated and unsaturated lipids with cholesterol have attracted a lot of attention because of the formation of two coexisting fluid bilayer phases in such systems over a broad range of temperature and composition. Interpretation of the phase behavior of such ternary mixtures must be based on a thorough understanding of the phase behavior of the binary mixtures formed with the same components. This article describes the phase behavior of mixtures of 1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DOPC) with 1,2-di-d(31)-palmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DPPC) between -20 and 50 degrees C. Particular attention has been paid to the phase coexistence below about 16 degrees C where the subgel phase appears. The changes in the shape of the spectrum (and its spectral moments) during the slow transformation process leads to the conclusion that below 16 degrees C the gel phase is metastable and the gel component of the two-phase mixture slowly transforms to the subgel phase with a slightly different composition. This results in a line of three-phase coexistence near 16 degrees C. Analysis of the transformation of the metastable gel domains into the subgel phase using the nucleation and growth model shows that the subgel domain growth is a two dimensional process.

Empirical determination of the absolute configuration of small chiral molecules using natural abundance 2H NMR in chiral liquid crystals.

Natural abundance deuterium 2D NMR spectroscopy in polypeptide liquid crystals is used for empirically determining the absolute configuration of small chiral molecules.

Simplification of the 1H NMR spectra of enantiomers dissolved in chiral liquid crystals, combining variable angle sample spinning and selective refocusing experiments.

This work presents a technique to simplify overcrowded proton spectra in chiral liquid crystal solvents using rotation of the sample near the magic angle, VASS, combined with homonuclear selective refocusing 2D NMR experiments, SERF. This methodology provides a powerful tool to visualise enantiomers out of unresolved proton spectra. A modified SERF sequence is presented where the resulting 2D spectrum can be phased to increase the resolution. Accurate enantiomeric excesses are determined that are not possible to measure on static samples. Two examples are presented.