Understanding and controlling protein motion at atomic resolution is a hallmark challenge. Time-resolved crystallography offers a window into protein motions, yet without a universal perturbation to initiate conformational changes the method has been limited in scope. Here we couple a solvent-based temperature jump with time-resolved crystallography to visualize structural motions in lysozyme. We observed widespread atomic vibrations on the nanosecond timescale, which evolve on the submillisecond timescale into localized structural fluctuations coupled to the active site. An orthogonal perturbation to the enzyme, inhibitor binding, altered these dynamics by blocking key motions that allow energy to dissipate from vibrations into functional movements linked to the catalytic cycle. Because temperature jump is a universal method for perturbing molecular motion, the method demonstrated here is broadly applicable for studying protein dynamics.

Alexander M. Wolff, Eriko Nango, Iris D. Young, Aaron S. Brewster, Minoru Kubo, Takashi Nomura, Michihiro Sugahara, Shigeki Owada, Benjamin A. Barad, Kazutaka Ito, Asmit Bhowmick, Sergio Carbajo, Tomoya Hino, James M. Holton, Dohyun Im, Lee J. O’Riordan, Tomoyuki Tanaka, Rie Tanaka, Raymond G. Sierra, Fumiaki Yumoto, Kensuke Tono, So Iwata, Nicholas K. Sauter, James S. Fraser, Michael C. Thompson