Interaction between surfactants and proteins

Abstract

Several approaches have been focused on the protein-surfactant interaction. Surfactant-protein interactions are very common in the fields of medicine, chemistry, biology etc. Indeed, many aspects of this interaction have been studied, such as the influence of the aggregation state of the surfactant (monomer, pre-micellar aggregate, micelle, and liposomes) on the protein structure, the properties of the surfactant-protein system, the characterization of the interaction sites on the protein surface, the identification of the intermediate protein conformations etc. The interaction of several types of proteins with the different kind of surfactant can furnish various information to the research of biochemical and biophysical systems, such as the structure-activity relationship of proteins as well as the mechanism of interaction between proteins and amphiphilic molecules. In this context, proteins with prosthetic group are very interesting ones, since the presence of the non-amino acid group can furnishes various information through different instrumental techniques of analysis, acting as a label of all polypeptide chains. The present work analyzes this topic and the potential of these studies.