Residual methyl protonation in perdeuterated proteins for multi-dimensional correlation experiments in MAS solid-state NMR spectroscopy

NMR studies involving perdeuterated proteins focus in general on exchangeable amide protons. However, non-exchangeable sites contain as well a small amount of protons as the employed precursors for protein biosynthesis are not completely proton depleted. The degree of methyl group protonation is in the order of 9% for CD₂H using >97% deuterium enriched glucose. We show in this manuscript that this small amount of residual protonation is sufficient to perform 2D and 3D MAS solid-state NMR experiments. In particular, we suggest a HCCH-TOBSY type experiment which we successfully employ to assign the methyl resonances in aliphatic side chains in a perdeuterated sample of the SH3 domain of chicken α-spectrin.