Yaheng Zhang

Studies on the interaction of gallic acid with human serum albumin in membrane mimetic environments

In this study the interaction between gallic acid and human serum albumin (HSA) in AOT/isooctane/water microemulsions was characterized for the first time using fluorescence quenching technique in combination with UV absorption spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy and dynamic light scattering (DLS) technique. In water-surfactant molar ratio (omega(o))=20 microemulsions fluorescence data revealed the presence of one binding site of gallic acid on HSA and its binding constants (K) were (1.18+/-0.02)x10(4), (1.13+/-0.02)x10(4), (1.03+/-0.02)x10(4), (0.95+/-0.02)x10(4), (0.87+/-0.02)x10(4) and (0.82+/-0.03)x10(4)M(-1) at 282, 289, 296, 303, 310 and 317 K, respectively. The affinities in microemulsions were much higher than that in buffer solution. FT-IR and CD data suggested that the protein conformations were altered with the reductions of alpha-helices from 54-56% for free HSA in buffer to 40-41% for free HSA in microemulsion. After binding with gallic acid, the alpha-helices of HSA in microemulsion increased 2-7% for different drug-protein molar ratio. The thermodynamic functions standard enthalpy (Delta H(0)) and standard entropy (DeltaS(0)) for the reaction were calculated to be -8.10 kJ mol(-1) and 49.42 J mol(-1)K(-1). These results indicated that gallic acid bound to HSA mainly by hydrophobic interaction and electrostatic interaction in microemulsions. In addition, the displacement experiments confirmed that gallic acid could bind to the site I of HSA, which was approved by the molecular modeling study. Furthermore, the DLS data suggested that HSA may locate at the interface of the microemulsion and gallic acid could interact with them.

Determination of proteins by flow injection analysis coupled with the Rayleigh light scattering technique.

A novel flow injection analysis (FIA) method with Rayleigh light scattering (RLS) detection was developed for the determination of protein concentrations. This method is based on the weak intensity of RLS of p-nitrohenzene-azo-3,6 disulfo-1-amino-8-naphthol-7-azo-benzene disodium salt (Amide Black-10B) which can be enhanced by addition of protein in weakly acidic solution. It has proved that the application of this method to quantify the proteins by using human serum albumin was available in real samples. In addition, this method is very sensitive (the determination limits are 0.11microg/mL for human serum albumen (HSA) and 0.85microg/mL for bovine serum albumen, BSA), simple, rapid and tolerance of most interfering substances. The FIA-RLS method was more stabile than the general RLS method and the average R.S.D. value of FIA-RLS less than general RLS. The effects of different interfering substances will be also examined. The amount of proteins in human serum sample was determined and the maximum relative error was no more than 3.00% as well as the recovery was between 94.9 and 105.9%.