Gas vesicles are gas-filled buoyancy organelles with walls that consist almost exclusively of gas vesicle protein A (GvpA). with a highly conserved sequence that is predicted by PSIPRED (10) and other algorithms to contain both vesicles have shown that 1), only five residues can be cleaved from?the C-terminus by using carboxypeptidase Y; 2), none of the nine D-X and E-X bonds in GvpA, situated throughout the sequence from E3-K4 to E58-A59 are accessible to endoproteinase GluC; buy Ferrostatin-1 and 3), only the N-terminal K4-T5 bond is accessible to trypsin (12) except for a rarely observed cleavage of the R17-I18 bond (13), the other R-X and K-X bonds situated from R17-I18 to K55-Y56 are not cleaved. Among the other gas vesicle proteins, GvpC buy Ferrostatin-1 is the best characterized. It is about three occasions larger than GvpA (14) and adheres to the outside of the shell created by GvpA, strengthening the overall structure (15). In addition to GvpA and GvpC, the proteins GvpF, GvpG, CTNND1 GvpJ, GvpL, and GvpM have been found in gas vesicles in amounts detectable only by immunoblotting (i.e., well under 1% of overall gas vesicle protein). GvpJ and GvpM have partial sequence similarity with GvpA and are hypothesized to be involved in cap formation, whereas GvpF, GvpL, and GvpG are hypothesized to be involved in nucleation of the gas vesicle assembly process at the tips of the caps (16). In addition, the and genes are required for synthesis of gas vesicles, although GvpO and GvpK proteins have not been detected in gas vesicles, indicating that these proteins may act as chaperones in the gas vesicle assembly process. The low-pitch helix of GvpA subunits gives rise to regularly spaced ribs running nearly perpendicular to the vesicle long axis, and it has been shown by x-ray diffraction from intact, partially aligned vesicles (11) and by atomic pressure microscopy (17) that the distance between neighboring ribs buy Ferrostatin-1 is usually 45.7 ? and that the ribs incorporate (19) has shown duplication of several of the most very easily assigned resonances, suggesting that GvpA is usually a member of the growing group of metamorphic proteins (20). Using secondary-structure-prediction algorithms, the duplicated resonances were interpreted in terms of asymmetric GvpA dimers that can explain how the strands of an antiparallel cells were produced under a 13CO2 and 15N2 atmosphere, and the gas vesicles were isolated, stripped of GvpC, collapsed, and prepared for magic-angle-spinning experiments as explained previously (19). Approximately 10 and 24 mg of sample were packed into 2.5- and 3.2-mm rotors, respectively. A 2H-exchanged sample was prepared by multiple rounds of centrifugally accelerated flotation of inflated vesicles in 99% 2H2O (Cambridge Isotope Laboratories, Andover, MA). Vesicles were then collapsed and 28 mg of sample was packed into a buy Ferrostatin-1 3.2-mm rotor. The solvent included 15% 2H8-glycerol (wt/wt) to prevent dehydration of the samples. NMR spectroscopy Solid-state NMR experiments were carried out using custom-designed spectrometers (D. J. Ruben, Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA) operating at 700 MHz and 750 MHz 1H Larmor frequencies, and a Bruker spectrometer (Billerica, MA), operating at 900 MHz 1H Larmor frequency. The 750 and 900?MHz spectrometers were equipped with triple-resonance 1H/13C/15N Bruker probes with 2.5-mm stators, and the 700 MHz spectrometer was equipped with a triple-resonance 1H/13C/15N Varian-Chemagnetics (Palo Alto, CA) probe with a 3.2-mm stator. The magic angle spinning (MAS) frequency was controlled to 5 Hz using Bruker MAS controllers, and the samples were cooled with a stream of chilly N2 gas during experiments, maintaining exit gas temperatures of ?40C to 5C. Sample temperatures are estimated to be 10C higher than the exit gas.