Proton NMR Studies of RNA’S and Related Enzymes Using Isotope Labels

Abstract

This article gives a brief history of proton NMR in RNA’s, mainly tRNA, followed by a descriptions of recent work in our lab based primarily on proton NMR aided by deuteron and nitrogen 15 labeling, directed more and more towards studies of protein-tRNA interaction. The field is young in that the first promising spectra of tRNA were reported by Kearns et al¹ roughly fifteen years ago; but tRNA is now one of the older areas of biochemical NMR, being overtaken, in amount of research, by studies of smaller RNA fragments and small enzymes. Transfer RNA, and especially tRNA synthetases, remain one of the larger molecules studied by NMR. Over the years tRNA has provided a testing ground for some types of NMR methodologies, and we hope that this will continue to be true. Transfer RNA is too large, probably, for us to expect to solve complete structures as appears possible for smaller proteins and nucleic acids, but on the other hand it is a small molecule by biological standards. It has well-studied interactions with enzymes but much remains to be learned, such as details of recognition by aminoacyl tRNA synthetases. Thus it is of interest to continue research on NMR of this important molecule.