Interactions Between Albumin and Fatty Acids Studied by NMR Spectroscopy

Abstract

Fatty acids are important substrates for the synthesis of membrane phospholipids and other bioactive compounds, and thus play vital roles in mammalian energy metabolism. Fatty acids often bind to proteins in the blood. Albumin is a major carrier and depot of free fatty acids. In this paper, the interactions between human serum albumin (HSA) and fatty acids were studied using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based histidine selective detection technology T2W-RD-WaterLOGSY. The spectra of HSA before and after fatty acids binding were compared. It was found that signals of the characterized His in HSA changed significantly with the addition of fatty acids. Two high-affinity binding sites between the HSA and fatty acids were identified from the titration curve. It was also demonstrated that binding to fatty acids could induce conformation changes for HSA.

Keywords

• nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)
• T2W-RD-WaterLOGSY
• human serum albumin (HSA)
• fatty acid
• histidine