Spectroscopic and molecular modelling analysis of the interaction between ethane-1,2-diyl bis(N,N-dimethyl-N-hexadecylammoniumacetoxy)dichloride and bovine serum albumin.

Several spectroscopic approaches namely fluorescence, time-resolved fluorescence, UV-visible, and Fourier transform infra-red (FT-IR) spectroscopy were employed to examine the interaction between ethane-1,2-diyl bis(N,N-dimethyl-N-hexadecylammoniumacetoxy)dichloride (16-E2-16) and bovine serum albumin (BSA). Fluorescence studies revealed that 16-E2-16 quenched the BSA fluorescence through a static quenching mechanism, which was further confirmed by UV-visible and time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy. In addition, the binding constant and the number of binding sites were also calculated. The thermodynamic parameters at different temperatures (298 K, 303 K, 308 K and 313 K) indicated that 16-E2-16 binding to BSA is entropy driven and that the major driving forces are electrostatic interactions. Decrease of the α-helix from 53.90 to 46.20% with an increase in random structure from 22.56 to 30.61% were also observed by FT-IR. Furthermore, the molecular docking results revealed that 16-E2-16 binds predominantly by electrostatic and hydrophobic forces to some residues in the BSA sub-domains IIA and IIIA.