Interaction of Sulfadiazine with Model Water Soluble Proteins: A Combined Fluorescence Spectroscopic and Molecular Modeling Approach

The binding behavior of antibacterial drug sulfadiazine (SDZ) with water soluble globular proteins like bovine as well as human serum albumin (BSA and HSA, respectively) and lysozyme (LYS) was monitored by fluorescence titration and molecular docking calculations. The experimental data reveal that the quenching of the intrinsic protein fluorescence in presence of SDZ is due to the strong interaction in the drug binding site of the respective proteins. The Stern-Volmer plot shows positive deviation at higher quencher concentration for all the proteins and was explained in terms of a sphere of action model. The calculated fluorophore-quencher distances vary within 4?~?11 Å in different cases. Fluorescence experiments at different temperature indicate thermodynamically favorable binding of SDZ with the proteins with apparently strong association constant (~10⁴–10⁵ M^?1) and negative free energy of interaction within the range of ?26.0?~??36.8 kJ mol^?1. The experimental findings are in good agreement with the respective parameters obtained from best energy ranked molecular docking calculation results of SDZ with all the three proteins.