Simultaneous ligand and receptor tracking through NMR spectroscopy enabled by distinct¹⁹F labels

To probe ligand-receptor binding at the atomic-level, a frequent approach involves multidimensional nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy experiments relying on¹³C-and/or¹⁵N-enrichment alongside¹H. Alternatively, the lack of fluorine in biomolecules may be exploited through specific incorporation of¹⁹F nuclei into a sample. The¹⁹F nucleus is highly sensitive to environmental changes and allows for one-dimensional NMR spectroscopic study, with perturbation to chemical shift and spin dynamics diagnostic of structural change, ligand binding, and modified conformational sampling. This was applied to the apelinergic system, which comprises a rhodopsin-like G protein-coupled receptor (the apelin receptor (AR)/APJ) and two families of cognate ligands, the apelin and apela (ELABELA/toddler) peptides. Specifically, AR fragments consisting of either the N-terminal tail and first transmembrane (TM) α-helix (AR55) or the first three transmembrane α-helices (TM1-3) were prepared with biosynthetic fluorotryptophan incorporation. Interactions of each AR fragment with a high-affinity, 2,4,5-trifluorophenylalanine labeled apelin analogue were compared by¹⁹F NMR. Distinct ranges of¹⁹F chemical shifts for ligand and receptor provide unambiguous tracking of both species, with distinct binding behaviour observed for each AR fragment implying that AR55 is not sufficient to recapitulate the physiological binding event. Site-specific perturbation was also apparent for the apelin analogue as a function of substitution site, indicating an orientational binding preference. As a whole, this strategy of distinctive¹⁹F labelling for ligand and receptor provides a relatively fast (i.e., employing 1D NMR experiments) and highly sensitive method to simultaneously and definitively track binding in both species.