Spectroscopic Investigation on the Interaction of Titanate Nanotubes with Bovine Serum Albumin

Abstract

In order to understand the transport mechanism and evaluate the biological safety of titanate nanotubes, the interactions of titanate nanotubes (TNTs) with bovine serum albumin (BSA) were investigated by applying spectroscopic methods under simulated physiological conditions. After taking into account the inner filter effect, the fluorescence intensity of BSA was found to be significantly enhanced by the presence of TNTs, indicating that the microenvironment of tryptophan and tyrosine residues in BSA became more hydrophobic. In addition, the absorption spectra of BSA showed a hyperchromic effect around 280 nm as the concentration of TNTs increased, suggesting that TNTs changed the microenvironment of the tryptophan and tyrosine residues. This is consistent with the results from fl uorescence spectroscopy studies. However, circular dichroism spectroscopy revealed that no signifi cant conformational change in BSA occurred during the interaction. We believe that Trp-213 was buried more compactly in the internal hydrophobic region, and hydrophobicity increased around Trp-134 with increasing TNTs concentration. From a spectroscopic point of view, this work elucidates the interaction mechanism of titanate nanotubes with BSA, and the methods used in this paper can also be applied to explore the molecular mechanism underlying toxicity of other nanomaterials.