Solid-state NMR Studies of Membrane Proteins Using Phospholipid Bicelles

Membrane proteins in highly oriented lipid bilayer samples are useful for membrane protein structure determination. We used in the past planar lipid bilayers which were aligned and supported on the glass slide. These samples were mechanically aligned in a magnetic field. However, these stacks of glass slides with planar lipid bilayers are not well suited for use with a commercial solid-state NMR probe with a round coil. Therefore, a homebuilt solid-state NMR probe was built and used with a stack of thin glass plates wherein the RF coil was wrapped directly around the flat square sample. Recently, we began to use magnetically aligned bicelles that are suitable for the structure determination of membrane proteins by solid-state NMR spectroscopy without any effort to build a flat square coil probe. These bicelle samples are well suited for use with a commercial solidstate NMR probe with a round coil, are very easy to prepare and are very stable, so that they can be kept for more than a year. In this paper, we present the solid-state NMR spectra of optimized and magnetically oriented bicelle samples of membrane proteins.