Protein resonance assignment by solid-state NMR based on 1H-detected 13C-based double-quantum spectroscopy at fast MAS

Solid-state NMR spectroscopy is a powerful technique to study insoluble and non-crystalline proteins and protein complexes at atomic resolution. The development of proton ( 1 H) detection at fast magic-angle spinning (MAS) has considerably increased the analytical capabilities of the technique, enabling the acquisition of 1 H-detected fingerprint experiments in few hours. Here an approach based on double-quantum (DQ) 13 C spectroscopy, detected on 1 H, is introduced at fast MAS (70 kHz) to perform the sequential assignment of insoluble proteins of small size, without any specific deuteration requirement. By combining two three-dimensional 1 H detected experiments correlating a 13 C DQ dimension respectively to its intra-residue and sequential 15 N- 1 H pairs, a sequential walk through DQ (Cα+CO) resonance is obtained. Our approach takes advantage of fast MAS to achieve an efficient sensitivity and the addition of a DQ dimension provides spectral features useful for the resonance assignment process.