Multi-technique approach on the interaction between sugar-based surfactant n-dodecyl β-d-maltoside and bovine serum albumin

A multi-technique approach which comprises various basic and advanced techniques, such as surface tensiometry, synchronous, intrinsic and extrinsic fluorescence, far and near-UV circular dichroism (CD), dynamic light scattering (DLS), Fourier transform infra-red (FTIR) and UV-visible spectrophotometries was applied to understand the interaction between biocompatible sugar-based surfactant n-dodecyl β-d-maltoside (C12G2) and bovine serum albumin (BSA). Formation of complex between surfactant and protein was initially confirmed by surface tension and UV absorption spectroscopy. The presence of BSA shifted the critical micelle concentration of the surfactant at higher concentration and in a similar way the UV spectrum of the BSA was altered by addition of small amount of surfactant. The interfacial properties of the complex such as πcmc (the surface pressure at the cmc), Γmax (the maximum surface excess) and Amin (the minimum surface area per molecule) were also calculated. Addition of surfactant causes the quenching of BSA fluorescence and a large blue-shift at both excitation wavelengths (280 and 295 nm) owing to the hydrophobic interaction between surfactant and protein. The quenching took place via static mechanism. Extrinsic fluorescence of 1-anilino-8-naphthalene sulfonate (ANS) increased as a result of the unfolding of the protein. The secondary and tertiary structure of BSA also influenced as revealed by the collective information obtained by far-UV CD, near-UV CD and FTIR spectroscopies. The increase in the size of the complex as a results of the partial unfolding was also confirmed by DLS measurements as well as resonance Rayleigh scattering (RRS).