Competitive Process of Binding Between the Anionic Surfactants Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate and Sodium Cholate in Bovine Serum Albumin

In this study sodium cholate (NaC) was used as a representative bile salt for the competitive binding between NaC and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) in bovine serum albumin (BSA), in 0.02 M tris‐HCl buffer solution at pH 7.50 and 25 °C. The NaC and SDS associations with BSA were monitored at low surfactant concentrations where only this specific binding process can develop. The applied method to monitor the binding was based on the analysis of the effect of SDS and NaC concentrations and their mixtures upon the fluorescence intensity of the BSA tryptophan residues. This consists of the measurement of the surfactant monomer partitioning between the dispersion medium and the microaggregates on the protein molecule where the binding is indicated by the quenching of the fluorescence chromophores. Experimentally, varying the protein concentration, the surfactant concentration needed to reach a given Io/I ratio (Io and I are the intensities with and without protein, respectively) was measured. The analyses, based on the average number of surfactant molecules bound on the protein, indicated that the SDS is a more efficient quencher than the bile salt. The need for 4–6 NaC bound molecules to give the same protein quenching efficiency by a single molecule of SDS was estimated. We concluded that the differences in the competitive binding on the protein are exclusively related to the quenching efficiency in the formation of the nonfluorescent fluorophore‐quencher complex via a physical contact and static quenching process.