Investigation of serum albumin solutions by NMR relaxation dispersion

Abstract

AbstractAn alternative interpretation is presented for the T1 dispersion data obtained by Kimmich and Noack [1, 2] for solutions of serum albumin. It is suggested that the T1 behaviour results from the presence of a minor proton phase with a singly peaked distribution p*(log τ) of logarithms of proton correlation times. An inflexion or possibly a maximum in p*(log τ) occurs near τ = 10−9.3 s. Most of the protons in the minor phase have τ < 10−8 s. p *(log τ) is zero for τ ≥ 10−5.7s but this may be an artifact due to cessation of fast exchange. The distribution p*(log τ) could not be resolved into separate contributions from helix and random coil regions of the serum albumin molecules.