Consistent blind protein structure generation from NMR chemical shift data

Protein NMR chemical shifts are highly sensitive to local structure. A robust protocol is described that exploits this relation for de novo protein structure generation, using as input experimental parameters the (13)C(alpha), (13)C(beta), (13)C', (15)N, (1)H(alpha) and (1)H(N) NMR chemical shifts. These shifts are generally available at the early stage of the traditional NMR structure determination process, before the collection and analysis of structural restraints. The chemical shift based structure determination protocol uses an empirically optimized procedure to select protein fragments from the Protein Data Bank, in conjunction with the standard ROSETTA Monte Carlo assembly and relaxation methods.…