Raman Optical Activity Monitoring the Interaction of Globular Proteins with Surfactants

Abstract

Protein denaturation by surfactants is related with topic as pharmaceutics, cosmetics, paints or biotechnology. This phenomenon is highly dependent on the physico-chemical properties of the denaturing agents. In this communication we report the ROA spectra of bovine serum albumin in the presence of different surfactants, which share a common hydrophobic tail, with the objerctive of correlating the structural specificities of the surfactant-protein interaction with the ROA signatures by following the protein unfolding process.In our work we propose two new groups of ROA marker bands related with the protein unfolding induced by surfactants. This work represents one of the first applications of ROA to study the interaction of a protein with surfactants, and a new proof of the ability of this chiroptical technique to see beyond that can be seen with conventional Raman spectroscopy.