(¹⁵N ± ¹³C') edited (4, 3)D-H(CC)CONH TOCSY and (4, 3)D-NOESY HNCO experiments for unambiguous side chain and NOE assignments of proteins with high shift degeneracy.

Well-resolved and unambiguous through-bond correlations and NOE data are crucial for high-quality protein structure determination by NMR. In this context, we present here (4, 3)D reduced dimensionality (RD) experiments: H(CC)CONH TOCSY and NOESY HNCO--which instead of (15)N shifts exploit the linear combination of (15)N(i) and (13)C'(i-1) shifts (where i is a residue number) to resolve the through-bond (1)H-(1)H correlations and through-space (1)H-(1)H NOEs. The strategy makes use of the fact that (15)N and (13)C' chemical shifts when combined linearly provide a dispersion which is better compared to those of the individual chemical shifts. The extended dispersion thus available in these experiments will help to obtain the unambiguous side chain and accurate NOE assignments especially for medium-sized alpha-helical or partially unstructured proteins [molecular weight (MW) between 12-15 kDa] as well as higher MW (between 15-25 kDa) folded proteins where spectral overlap renders inaccurate and ambiguous NOEs. Further, these reduced dimensionality experiments in combination with routinely used (15)N and (13)C' edited TOCSY and NOESY experiments will provide an alternative way for high-quality NMR structure determination of large unstable proteins (with very high shift degeneracy), which are not at all amenable to 4D NMR. The utility of these experiments has been demonstrated here using (13)C/(15)N labeled ubiquitin (76 aa) protein.