Vallurupalli Pramodh, Sekhar Ashok, Yuwen Tairan, Kay Lewis E
TIFR Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences, Hyderabad, India.
Departments of Molecular Genetics, Biochemistry and Chemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
J Biomol NMR. 2017 Apr;67(4):243-271. doi: 10.1007/s10858-017-0099-4. Epub 2017 Mar 19.
Although Chemical Exchange Saturation Transfer (CEST) type NMR experiments have been used to study chemical exchange processes in molecules since the early 1960s, there has been renewed interest in the past several years in using this approach to study biomolecular conformational dynamics. The methodology is particularly powerful for the study of sparsely populated, transiently formed conformers that are recalcitrant to investigation using traditional biophysical tools, and it is complementary to relaxation dispersion and magnetization transfer experiments that have traditionally been used to study chemical exchange processes. Here we discuss the concepts behind the CEST experiment, focusing on practical aspects as well, we review some of the pulse sequences that have been developed to characterize protein and RNA conformational dynamics, and we discuss a number of examples where the CEST methodology has provided important insights into the role of dynamics in biomolecular function.
自20世纪60年代初以来，化学交换饱和转移（CEST）类型的核磁共振实验就被用于研究分子中的化学交换过程，但在过去几年里，人们对使用这种方法研究生物分子构象动力学又重新产生了兴趣。该方法对于研究难以用传统生物物理工具进行研究的低丰度、瞬时形成的构象异构体特别有效，并且它与传统上用于研究化学交换过程的弛豫色散和磁化转移实验互补。在这里，我们讨论CEST实验背后的概念，同时也关注实际应用方面；我们回顾了一些为表征蛋白质和RNA构象动力学而开发的脉冲序列；并且我们讨论了一些例子，其中CEST方法为动力学在生物分子功能中的作用提供了重要见解。
