Fluorescence Study of Sinapic Acid Interaction with Bovine Serum Albumin and Egg Albumin

The mechanism of interaction of protein with compounds used for preparation of matrices for matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization–mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS) methods is unknown. This paper reports the investigation of this mechanism for sinapic acid and bovine serum albumin and egg albumin. To examine these interactions in water a fluorescence method was applied. Sinapic acid can exist in three different forms, depending on pH: undissociated and with one or two deprotonated groups. pK_as of these states are: 4.47 for the COOH group and 9.21 for the OH group 1]. Therefore the interactions were examined at pH: 2.0, 6.4, and 10.5. The results show that sinapic acid at pH 10.5, being a bivalent anion, does not form any complex with these two proteins. At pH 2.0, sinapic acid, being undissociated, interacts weakly with egg albumin. Sinapic acid does not interact with bovine serum albumin at this pH. At pH 6.4, sinapic acid interacts only with bovine serum albumin. Parameters of the sinapic acid and bovine serum albumin complex were calculated based on the theory of multiple equlibria: the total number of binding sites, N = 15; the binding constant, K = 600 M ^–1; and the Hill's coefficient, j = 0.97. These parameters indicate (but not definitively because a large saturation was not obtained) that this is a simple binding of sinapic acid to bovine serum albumin with the binding sites of the same type.