Spectroscopic Studies on the Interaction of Acid Yellow With Bovine Serum Albumin

Azo dyes, which are common in the environment, can be toxic to various organisms. In order to determine the molecular mechanism of acid yellow 11(AY) toxicity, we studied the effect of AY exposure to the common protein bovine serum albumin (BSA) by several spectroscopic techniques including fluorescence spectroscopy, ultraviolet spectrophotometry (UV) and circular dichroism (CD). It could be concluded from the fluorescence spectra that the quenching effect of BSA by AY was mainly due to complex formation which was unrelated to the absorption of AY. The enthalpy change (ΔH) and entropy change (ΔS) were found to be −21.94 kJ/mol and 30.04 Jmol-1 K-1, respectively. The results confirm that electrostatic attraction was the predominant intermolecular force between BSA and AY. Furthermore, the binding distance (r) between AY and the inner tryptophan residue of BSA was determined to be 3.541 nm on the basis of Forster theory of non-radiative energy transfer. In addition, the conformational changes of BSA in the presence of AY were also analyzed by UV and CD. These results indicated that AY could interact with BSA by complex formation, which also affected the structure of BSA.