Proteins are made up of long chains of amino acids. Their structure and stability are important for the existence of life. They are only active in their native conformation, which together with their structure and stability depends on a large number of parameters. These include above all pH value, temperature, type and concentration of the buffer and the concentration of specific added substances (salt, sugar, denaturants ...).
Aqueous solutions of proteins usually contain buffers that regulate the pH of a solution and maintain the stability of the protein. Solutions usually contain some low molecular weight salts. The buffer not only influences the protein by regulating the pH, but can also bind to the protein and change its properties. Similar binding has also been observed when studying the effects of ions (from used salts) on the protein.
The aim of this work is to deepen the understanding of protein-protein, protein-ion and protein-buffer interactions. We investigated how the change of different parameters (concentration and type of buffer, concentration of the protein and pH) affects the zeta potential and the size of the particles in the HEWL protein solution. We correlated the measurements with the binding of buffer molecules on the surface of the protein. At pH 2 we used phosphate, glycine and KCl-HCl as buffers. At pH level 9 we used glycine and bis tris. We also investigated the effect of changing the protein concentration from 0.5 mg/ml to 2.5 mg/l. All other solutions had a protein concentration of 5 mg/ml.
In a similar way we investigated the effects on the BSA protein. In the case of BSA, we devoted our efforts to studying the effects of adding different types and concentrations (0.1 M - 1.75 M) of alkali salts (NaCl, NaBr, NaI, LiCl, KCl, RbCl and CsCl). We investigated the overall influence of the type of buffer and the type of salt on particle size and zeta potential. At pH 4.3 we performed two sets of experiments, one with 20mM acetate buffer and the other with citrate.
The results of the theoretically calculated binding energies (calculated by molecular docking analysis) were related to the measured particle sizes and zeta potentials. Only the HEWL protein was analysed by docking analysis because the BSA structure is too complex.
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