Insight into the Crystalline Structure of ThF4 with the Combined Use of Neutron Diffraction, 19F Magic-Angle Spinning-NMR, and Density Functional Theory Calculations.

Because of its sensitivity to the atomic scale environment, solid-state NMR offers new perspectives in terms of structural characterization, especially when applied jointly with first-principles calculations. Particularly, challenging is the study of actinide-based materials because of the electronic complexity of the actinide cations and to the hazards due to their radioactivity. Consequently, very few studies have been published in this subfield. In the present paper, we report a joint experimental-theoretical analysis of thorium tetrafluoride, ThF4, containing a closed-shell actinide (5f0) cation. Its crystalline structure has been revisited in the present work using powder neutron diffraction experiments. The 19F NMR parameters of the seven F crystallographic sites have been modeled using an empirical superposition model, periodic first-principles calculations, and a cluster-based all-electron approach. On the basis of the atomic position optimized structure, a complete and unambiguous assignment of the 19F NMR resonances to the F sites has been obtained.

Rapid calculation of protein chemical shifts using bond polarization theory and its application to protein structure refinement.

Although difficult to analyze, NMR chemical shifts provide detailed information on protein structure. We have adapted the semi-empirical bond polarization theory (BPT) to protein chemical shift calculation and chemical shift driven protein structure refinement. A new parameterization for BPT amide nitrogen chemical shift calculation has been derived from MP2 ab initio calculations and successfully evaluated using crystalline tripeptides. We computed the chemical shifts of the small globular protein ubiquitin, demonstrating that BPT calculations can match the results obtained at the DFT level of theory at very low computational cost. In addition to the calculation of chemical shift tensors, BPT allows the calculation of chemical shift gradients and consequently chemical shift driven geometry optimizations. We applied chemical shift driven protein structure refinement to the conformational analysis of a set of Trypanosoma brucei (the causative agent of African sleeping sickness) tryparedoxin peroxidase Px III structures. We found that the interaction of Px III with its reaction partner Tpx seems to be governed by conformational selection rather than by induced fit.

Calculation of fluorine chemical shift tensors for the interpretation of oriented (19)F-NMR spectra of gramicidin A in membranes.

A semi-empirical method for the prediction of chemical shifts, based on bond polarization theory, has recently been introduced for (13)C. Here, we extended this approach to calculate the (19)F chemical shift tensors of fluorine bound to aromatic rings and in aliphatic CF(3) groups. For the necessary parametrization, ab initio chemical shift calculations were performed at the MP2 level for a set of fluorinated molecules including tryptophan. The bond polarization parameters obtained were used to calculate the (19)F chemical shift tensors for several crystalline molecules, and to reference the calculated values on a chemical shift scale relative to CFCl(3). As a first biophysical application, we examined the distribution of conformations of a (19)F-labeled tryptophan side chain in the membrane-bound ion channel peptide, gramicidin A. The fluorine chemical shift tensors were calculated from snapshots of a molecular dynamics simulation employing the (19)F-parametrized bond polarization theory. In this MD simulation, published (2)H quadrupolar and (15)N-(1)H dipolar couplings of the indole ring were used as orientational constraints to determine the conformational distribution of the 5F-Trp(13) side chain. These conformations were then used to interpret the spectra of (19)F-labeled gramicidin A in fluid and gel phase lipid bilayers.