Detection and Characterization of Boric Acid and Borate Ion Binding to Cytochrome c Using Multiple Quantum Filtered NMR

The application of multiple quantum filtered (MQF) NMR to the identification and characterization of the binding of ligands containing quadrupolar nuclei to proteins is demonstrated. Using relaxation times measured by MQF NMR multiple binding of boric acid and borate ion to ferri and ferrocytochrome c was detected. Borate ion was found to have two different binding sites. One of them was in slow exchange, k _diss = 20 ± 3 s^-1 at 5°C and D₂O solution, in agreement with previous findings by ¹H NMR (G. Taler et al., 1998, Inorg. Chim. Acta 273, 388-392). The triple quantum relaxation of the borate in this site was found to be governed by dipolar interaction corresponding to an average B-H distance of 2.06 ± 0.07 Å. Other, fast exchanging sites for borate and boric acid could be detected only by MQF NMR. The binding equilibrium constants at these sites at pH 9.7 were found to be 1800 ± 200 M^-1 and 2.6 ± 1.5 M^-1 for the borate ion and boric acid, respectively. Thus, detection of binding by MQF NMR proved to be sensitive to fast exchanging ligands as well as to very weak binding that could not be detected using conventional methods.