Laser-induced europium(III) luminescence as a probe of the metal ion mediated association of human prothrombin with phospholipid.

7F0 leads to 5D0 excitation spectroscopy of Eu(III) has been used to investigate the Eu(III) and phospholipid binding properties of human prothrombin. The results indicate that human prothrombin contains four high-affinity Eu(III) binding sites which are distributed into two classes of binding sites. When 4 equiv of Eu(III) is bound to prothrombin, the prothrombin is capable of binding to phospholipid vesicles. The deuterium isotope effect on the lifetime of the Eu(III)-prothrombin complex and the Eu(III)-prothrombin-phospholipid complex was used to determine the number of water molecules coordinated to the Eu(III). In both complexes, each of the Eu(III)'s coordinated to 2.5 +/- 0.5 water molecules. These results indicate that the binding of the Eu(III)-prothrombin complex to the phospholipid does not require the formation of a prothrombin-Eu(III)-phospholipid bridge.