Unravelling the thermodynamics and binding interactions of bovine serum albumin (BSA) with thiazole based carbohydrazide: Multi-spectroscopic, DFT and molecular dynamics approach

Abstract

In the present manuscript, a novel 2-((4-chlorophenyl)amino)-N'-(4-(diethylamino)-2-hydroxybenzylidene)thiazole-4-carbohydrazide (H1) has been synthesized and characterized using various spectroscopic techniques including 1D, 2D NMR, FT-IR and single-crystal XRD. Various electrostatic parameters such as frontier molecular orbital (FMO), natural bond orbital (NBO), Fukui functions and nonlinear optical (NLO) properties were explored by Density Functional Theory (DFT) using B3LYP/6-311+G(d,p) level of theory. The effect of solvent polarity on electronic absorption spectra was investigated using Time dependent-DFT. The thermodynamic parameters such as heat capacity, entropy and enthalpy were also investigated at different temperatures. Moreover, photophysical studies were performed to examine the effect of solvent polarity and viscosity. A positive solvatochromism and a 7 fold fluorescence enhancement were observed with the increase of solvent polarity and viscosity, respectively. The compound exhibit aggregation-induced emission in THF:H2O system. The binding interaction of H1 with BSA and its mechanism has been investigated using UV-visible absorption and fluorescence quenching techniques. The thermodynamics of binding suggest the presence of spontaneous hydrogen bonding interactions, as –ve values of ΔG, ΔS and ΔH were observed. The experimental results obtained from BSA binding studies were validated through in silico molecular docking and dynamics techniques. Molecular modelling studies perfectly corroborate the experimentally obtained results.