The backbone dynamics of the C-terminal DNA-binding domain of
Escherichia colitopoisomerase I has been characterized in the absence and presence ofsingle-stranded DNA by NMRspectroscopy.
15N spin-lattice relaxation times(T
1), spin-spin relaxation times(
T2), and heteronuclearNOEs were determined for the uniformly
15N-labeled protein.These data were analyzed by using themodel-free formalism to derive the model-free parameters(
S2,
e, and
Rex) for each backbone N-H bondvector and the overall molecular rotational correlation time(
m). The molecular rotationalcorrelationtime
m was determined to be 7.49 ± 0.36 ns for thefree and 12.7 ± 1.07 ns for the complexed protein.Several residues were found to be much more mobile than theaverage, including 11 residues at theN-terminus, 2 residues at the C-terminus, and residues 25 and 31-35which are located in a region of theprotein that binds to DNA. The binding of ssDNA to the freeprotein causes a slight increase in the orderparameters (
S2) for a small number of residuesand a slight decrease in the order parameters(
S2) for themajority of the residues. In particular, upon binding to ssDNA,the mobility of the first
-helix and thetwo
-sheets was slightly increased, and the mobility of a fewspecific residues in the loops/turns wasrestricted. These results differ from the previous studies on thebackbone dynamics of molecular complexesin which reduced mobilities were typically observed upon ligandbinding.