【For INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH 2018】

DATE: Day 30

Month 04 Year 2019

SUMMARY of2018 RESEARCH RESULTS REPORTFor International Collaborative Research with IPR, Osaka University
Research Title

Development and applications of solid-state NMR techniques tostudy the structure and dynamics of bio-solids

ApplicantName

Ayyalusamy Ramamoorthy

Affiliation

University of Michigan

Present Title

Professor

Research Collaborator (Host PI)

Professor Toshimichi Fujiwara

Summary
Solid-state NMR provides structural information of biological systems such as biological membranesand fibers which are not amenable to X-ray crystallography owing to difficulties in forming
well-ordered crystals. However, applicability of NMR to study biologically important
macromolecular complexes is primarily limited by the sensitivity of NMR spectroscopy. Therefore,
we apply recently developed technologies, such as high-field dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP)
and high-speed magic angle spinning, to the sensitivity enhancement of solid-state NMR incollaboration with researchers at Institute for Protein Research, Osaka University. Conventional
methods of structure elucidation, i.e. X-ray crystallography and solution-state NMR, often fail whenapplied to membrane proteins, which play very important roles in most diseases. We recently studied
the structural dynamics of a very large (~72-kDa) protein-protein complex in a membrane mimeticsystem called nanodiscs. The results obtained from this investigation is now published inAngew.Chem.(2018). In addition, we are carrying out multi-microseconds MD simulations to better
understand the amyloidogenic peptide folding and aggregation in a lipid membrane environment.
The parallel computing using IPR facilitated UV 3000 enable us to generate a structural model for
membrane-bound and polymer-bound amyloid intermediates. Although, this study is in progress andwould need more simulations and calculations in the coming years, initial results obtained this work
has been published (Sahoo et al. 2018; Sahoo et al. 2019). In addition, we are able to carry outcoarse-grain and all-atom MD simulations to demonstrate the self-assembly process nderlying theformation of lipid-nanodiscs by polymers, recently synthesized in our lab, using the parallel
computing of IPR. These results, along with the reconstitution of membrane proteins in nanodiscs,
have been reported in a recent publication: Sahoo et al. J..Phys. Chem. B (2019). All of thesepublications and the presentations in scientific meetings/conferences acknowledged the collaborativeand resource support from IPR. We look forward to carrying out solid-state NMR experiments on avariety of exciting biological systems in the coming years.
We take this opportunity to thank IPR (and Professor Fujiwara and the Director of IPR) for thecontinued support to our research.

【For INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH 2018】*Deadline: May 17, 2019
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