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Key Laboratory of Colloid and Interface Chemistry (Shandong University), Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, China
Correspondence: Address reprint requests to Jinghe Yang, Fax: 86-531-8564464; E-mail: yjh{at}sdu.edu.cn.
| ABSTRACT |
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| INTRODUCTION |
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-helix/random coil model" ((Mattice et al., 1976). Among them, the necklace model seems to be best supported by experimental results, obtained with techniques such as small-angle neutron scattering study (Ibel et al., 1990
However, the surfactants used are typically anionic surfactants such as SDS because it has a stronger interaction with the protein compared to cationic surfactants (Nozaki et al., 1974
; Ananthapadmanabhan, 1993
). In addition, the surfactants are usually controlled to be at the low concentrations. It is valuable for us to know the changes of BSA at the high concentration of surfactants. Herein, we investigated in deeper details the interaction of BSA with aromatic cationic surfactants CPB from low to high concentrations, mainly at the concentrations of its first and second critical micelle concentration (CMC). The study also proposed the structural models of protein-CPB complex and evaluated the effect of the aromatic ring stacking between BSA and CPB.
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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Methods
Ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) spectroscopy was recorded on a Hitachi UV-4100 spectrophotometer at room temperature in a 1-cm quartz cuvette. Static fluorescence spectroscopy was recorded with a F4500 spectrofluorimeter (Hitachi, Tokyo, Japan) in a 1-cm quartz cuvette and the excitation and emission slits are both 5 nm with the scan speed of 1200 nm/min. Far-UV and near-UV circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy was carried out on a JASCO J-725S spectropolarimeter (Easton, MD). The 1H-NMR spectroscopy was recorded with a Bruker (Billerica, MA) Avance-600 spectrometer (600 MHz) using D2O as solvent. Chemical shifts were reported in ppm (
) relative to internal standard tetramethylsilane at 0.00 ppm. CMC data were measured on a processor tensiometer-K12 (with a precision of 0.01 mN x m1; Krüss, Hamburg, Germany) by the Wilhelmy plate. Small angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) curves were obtained at the SAXS beam line of a Philips PW3830 x-ray generator (Eindhoven, The Netherlands) (50 K, 40 mA), at room temperature (22 ± 1°C), with radiation wavelength
= 1.542 Å and sample-to-detector distance of 233 nm with an MBRAUN (Stratham, NH) position sensitive detector. The obtained curves (data collection of 16 min) were corrected and normalized by taking into account the decrease of the x-ray beam intensity during the experiment. Due to the samples' attenuation, the parasitic background (buffer solution) was subtracted.
| RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS |
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-helix content (Gaggelli et al., 2002
A caused by the addition of CPB versus the logarithm of the concentration of surfactant (Fig. 1 b). Five characteristic regions were observed, indicating the binding of surfactant as a ligand to BSA. The curve in the left four regions (from 1 to 4) was in good agreement with the binding isotherms reported previously (Jones, 1975
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225 nm. The absorbance and the peak position moved toward shorter wavelengths with the increase of CPB concentration. And these changes were presented in region 5 of Fig. 1 b. Folding reoccurs for BSA, possibly meaning a renaturing process. However, in this region BSA differs from native BSA because this peak does not come back to 200 nm, indicating the changes in polarity of the microenvironment. In addition, the second CMC of CPB in the absence of BSA was obtained to be 8.50 (±0.13) x 105 mol/L with pyrene as a fluorescence probe according to the reported method (Li et al., 1985
Far-UV CD spectroscopy gave quantitative information on the secondary structure mentioned above (Fig. 2 a). The spectra (normalized to residue molar ellipticity) were analyzed with the software DICROPROT by self-consistent method to get structural information from the spectral changes (Deleage, 1993
). At the first CMC, the CD spectra gave a large value of molar ellipticity at 222 and 208 nm, indicating an augmentation of the
-helix content in BSA structure from 49 to 78%; at the same time, the ß-sheet content decreased from 9.8 to 7.6%. When CPB concentration reached the second CMC, the molar ellipticity decreased, yielding a broad minimum at 217 nm, where
-helix was calculated to be 37% and ß-sheet to be 10.5%.
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Based on the results mentioned above, we suggest that at low CPB concentration, the surfactant molecules bind on the surface of protein through electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions, causing the protein to expand somewhat. Large amounts of CPB molecules are adsorbed on the surface of the protein with the increasing concentrations of CPB, resulting in the formation of the aggregates (such as micelle-like clusters). The intrachain hydrophobic interaction is replaced by the repulsive force, leading to the expanding of polypeptide and the unfolding of BSA, and finally destroys the tertiary structure.
When CPB concentration reaches its second CMC in BSA-CPB system, the surfactant molecules aggregate in the big rod micelles with strong hydrophobic inner core, resulting in stronger hydrophobic interaction between CPB and BSA in comparison to their electrostatic force. In addition, the dimension of rod micelle is similar to that of BSA (May and Ben-Shaul, 2001
). Far-UV and near-UV CD studies also indicate that the secondary and tertiary structures of BSA under this condition were compressed and refolded. On the basis of above reasons, we propose a structural model of CPB-BSA complex at the second CMC of CPB in which BSA molecule penetrates into the rod micelle of CPB. In this packing model, the rod micelle limits the expanding of BSA molecule. On the other hand, the stronger hydrophobic interaction makes the hydrophobic part of the BSA molecule expose outside while its hydrophilic part is totally buried inside. Thus, BSA is refolded again, but the refolding is different from that in the aqueous environment, and refolded structure is different from the native BSA according to their far-UV and near-UV CD spectra.
1H-NMR studies
Here, we chose the NMR method to obtain the information on the mobility of different parts of surfactant molecule, e.g., headgroup region versus tails, and in turn, provided the information on the location of the protein in relation to the surfactant headgroups and the tails in the complex. In this article NMR spectra of 1.0 x 105 and 9.0 x 105 mol/L CPB and their complexes with 1.0 x 104 g/mL BSA were shown in Fig. 3. Corresponding to the pyridine in the headgroup of CPB, there were three clusters signals (Sun et al., 2004
); the peaks at the chemical shift of
9.169, 8.774, and 8.298 ppm in Fig. 3 (1) corresponded to the H-2, H-1, and H-3, respectively. When CPB was mixed with BSA near the first CMC, three signals were broadened and moved to upfield significantly. The broadening effect indicates a significant reduction in the headgroup mobility and the involvement of the headgroup in the protein-surfactant aggregate, which supports the model that the protein wraps around the micelles or premicelles.
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may serve as a measure of the extent of stacking. The strength of aromatic ring stacking in solution may be evaluated by stacking efficiency
(Ladokhin et al., 1999
![]() | (1) |
and
are observed upfield shift value and the shift expected for complete stacking, respectively. And
can be estimated according to a simple model of aromatic ring stacking:
![]() | (2) |
The association constant K is defined by:
![]() | (3) |
can be calculated by
usingEq. 4:
![]() | (4) |
and
represent the shift in monomeric A and in a complete stacking, respectively.
In our system, K in Eq. 3 was calculated by fluorophotometry (Guo et al., 2003
) according to Eq. 5:
![]() | (5) |
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for H-2 and H-3 are 0.179 and 0.085, and the corresponding efficiency are 0.76 and 0.73, respectively. This indicates that these two protons are the closest to the aromatic rings of BSA. When CPB reached its second CMC, these signals become as narrow as those of the pure CPB except a little upfield moving, indicating that the headgroups of CPB gain their mobility again due to the departure from the BSA surface. This result is considered as the form of rod micelles at CPB's second CMC. And the upfield moving in the spectra is considered to be the result of the weak aromatic rings stacking between the CPB molecules themselves.
Fluorescence spectroscopy
Fluorescence measurements showed that the addition of CPB could markedly influence the fluorescence of BSA. At the excitation wavelength of 290 nm, BSA was excited and the emission peak was at 350 nm. When a low concentration of CPB was added, the BSA emission was enhanced (Fig. 4 a). This enhancing effect reached a maximum at 1.25 x 105 mol/L CPB and remained constant until 7.50 x 105 mol/L, then the fluorescence of BSA was quenched suddenly, as shown in Fig. 4 b. The second-order derivative fluorescence spectra were recorded to analyze the details of this enhancement, which were shown in Fig. 4 c. The peak at 280 nm was attributed to tyrosine residue and the peak at 320 nm was attributed to tryptophan residue (Wang et al., 2000
). In the presence of CPB, the peak of tryptophan residue increases significantly, indicating that it is the main contributor for the BSA fluorescence. The I quenching test proved that the dosage of I required to quench the fluorescence of unfolded BSA in the first CMC of CPB was about twice that required for native BSA. There are two tryptophan residues in one BSA molecule: Trp-134 in the eighth helix of D129-R144 in domain I, and Trp-213 in the second helix of E206-F221 in domain II (McLachlan and Walker, 1977
). Only the helix of Trp-134 is active to interact with ligand in native BSA (similar to known crystallographic structure of human serum albumin (PDB1BJ5)) (shown in Fig. 5). As a ligand, CPB with low concentration primarily acts on Trp-134 through the aromatic ring stacking, which was proved by our NMR measurement above. With the increase of CPB concentration, Trp-213 gradually is exposed to the surface of BSA and interacts with CPB due to the unfolding of BSA. When CPB reaches its second CMC and above, BSA is refolded and tryptophan residues are hidden from CPB, and accordingly the aromatic ring stacking between CPB and the tryptophan residues disappears.
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![]() | (6) |
the scattering vector; 2
, the scattering angle). In this study, the concentrations of both of BSA and CPB were low enough that they could be considered as a widely separated system (not interaction system, S(q)
1). Hence, I(q) can be represented as (Improta et al., 1998
![]() | (7) |
The inverse Fourier transform of I(q) yields P(r), which is the frequency of vectors connecting small-volume elements within the entire volume of the scattering particles (Glatter and Krathy, 1982
):
![]() | (8) |
The behavior of P(r) provides the information about the shape of the scattering particles, thus it is extremely sensitive to the disposition of domains within a multidomain structure, and it goes to zero at the maximum linear dimension Dmax of the molecule. Moreover, the particle radius of gyration Rg is derived from P(r) and gives a simple measure of the distribution of volume elements within the molecule away from its center-of-mass, which is defined as the root-mean square of all elemental volumes from the center-of-mass of the particle, weighted by their scattering densities.
can be represented as (Glatter and Krathy, 1982
):
![]() | (9) |
The SAXS experimental results are presented in Fig. 6. It can be seen that there are obvious difference between the curves of BSA in the absence and presence of CPB at both the first CMC and above the second CMC. Compared to the native BSA, two distinct regions in the SAXS curve are marked when CPB is added. One has a greater slope than that of native BSA in the small q region, suggesting an increase in the scattering particle size, and another one has a different decay in the scattering curve, indicating changes of the protein shape. The data were analyzed through the distance distribution function p(r) using the GNOM program for Eqs. 8 and 9 (GNOM program is available free at ftp://ftp.embl-hamburg.de/szx.) When CPB is at its first CMC, calculated values of Rg and Dmax are 41.4 and 145 Å for BSA-CPB, and 30.2 and 95 Å for the native BSA, indicating a CPB-induced protein expanding. Whereas, when CPB concentration reaches its second CMC, Rg and Dmax decrease to 34.1 and 99 Å, which are a little bigger than that of native BSA but obviously smaller than those in BSA-CPB at its first CMC. Therefore, there is clear evidence that the expansion of BSA is limited and the size of the complex is decreased. In addition, it can also be seen from Fig. 6 that both Rg and the scattering intensity (I) have significant enhancement at the first CMC of CPB, which is considered to be the result of the aggregation between the clusters of BSA-CPB via the interaction between the hydrophobic patches exposed on the polypeptides chains in BSA. On the contrary, both Rg and I decrease at the second CMC of CPB, which indicates the decreasing of the aggregation mentioned above.
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| CONCLUSIONS |
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| ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS |
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This work was supported by Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province, and by Visiting Scholar Foundation of Key Laboratory at Shandong University.
Submitted on August 18, 2004; accepted for publication February 4, 2005.
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