Heterogeneous systems dynamically, membrane proteins

H. Saito, NMR studies on structurally or dynamically heterogeneous systems dynamic aspects of hydrogels, protein fibrils and membrane proteins, Annu. Rep. NMR Spectrosc. 74 (2011) 1-88. 

Key Words Structurally and/or dynamically heterogeneous systems, Hydrogels, Protein fibrils, Membrane proteins, Dynamic aspects... 

Structural as well as dynamical studies of membrane proteins, constituting an estimated 30% of all proteins, are very important in view of their crucial biological importance. These membrane proteins are obviously dynamically heterogeneous systems, even though they are structurally homogeneous without any cross-links or aggregation so far discussed. 

We have emphasized here that the dynamic aspects of NMR studies are crucially important for structurally or dynamically heterogeneous systems such as synthetic or natural hydrogels, protein fibrils and membrane proteins. This is in order to characterize their unique chemical, physical and biological properties in terms of a variety of fluctuation frequencies, including high (> 108 Hz) or intermediate (104-105 Hz) frequency fluctuations. It turns out that the presence of the high-frequency motions, which are readily evaluated by comparative CPMAS and DDMAS studies, is... 

---