Complexes between C.I. Acid Orange 6 and human serum albumin, a multi-spectroscopic approach to investigate the binding behavior

Abstract The interaction mechanism of Acid Orange 6 (AO6) with human serum albumin (HSA) was investigated firstly by using fluorescence quenching technique, UV absorbance, circular dichroism (CD), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), three-dimensional fluorescence spectroscopy in combination with molecular modeling method under simulative physiological conditions. Fluorescence data indicated that there is a single class of binding sites between AO6 and HSA, and the alterations of HSA secondary structure in the presence of AO6 was confirmed by synchronous fluorescence, UV, CD, FT-IR and three-dimensional fluorescence spectra. The efficiency of fluorescence resonance energy transfer provided the binding distance ( r ) of 2.83 nm for AO6–HSA system. Furthermore, the thermodynamic parameters enthalpy change (Δ H 0 ) and entropy change (Δ S 0 ) for the reaction were calculated to be −5.77 kJ mol −1 and 109.42 J mol −1  K −1 , respectively, according to Van't Hoff equation, these data suggested that both hydrophobic forces and hydrogen bonding play a major role in the binding of AO6 to HSA, which agrees well with the results of molecular modeling study. Experimental results showed that the interaction between AO6 and HSA induced a conformational change of HSA, which was proved by the qualitative and quantitative analysis data of different spectroscopic techniques under simulative physiological conditions.