The overall research plan is to describe the protein and DNA of the filamentous bacteriophages. NMR spectroscopy of the viral nucleoprotein complexes and the coat protein in reconstituted phospholipid bilayers enables this description of the protein and DNA, and their interactions, to be at the biophysical level of detail. The structure of the coat protein in the virus is being determined by the solid state NMR experiments on virus samples oriented in the magnetic field of the spectrometer. The method for structure determination takes advantage of the spectral simplifications that accompany macroscopic uniaxial orientation of a polymeric samples parallel to the applied magnetic field. The angular dependent of the nuclear spin interactions is then used to determine the orientation of individual sites. The motions of the DNA and protein in the virus and of the protein in the virus and of the protein in lipid bilayers are being characterized. This is done in solid state NMR by explicitly separating geometrical and dynamical factors in the analysis of resonance lineshapes and relaxation parameters.
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