Protein-stabilized magnetic fluids

Abstract The adsorption of bovine serum albumin (BSA) and egg yolk phosvitin on magnetic fluid particles was investigated. Incubation mixtures were prepared by mixing an alkaline suspension of tetramethylammonium-coated magnetite cores with protein solutions at various protein/Fe 3 O 4 ratios, followed by dialysis against a 5 mM TES buffer (pH 7.0), after which separation of bound and non-bound protein by high-gradient magnetophoresis was executed. Both the kinetic profiles as well as the isotherms of adsorption strongly differed for both proteins. In case of the spherical BSA, initially, abundant adsorption occurred, then it decreased and—at high protein concentrations—it slowly raised again. In contrast, with the highly phosphorylated phosvitin, binding slowly started and the extent of protein adsorption remained unchanged both as a function of time and phosvitin concentration. Competition binding studies, using binary protein mixtures composed of equal weight amounts of BSA and phosvitin, showed that binding of the latter protein is ‘unrealistically’ high. Based on the geometry of the two proteins, putative pictures on their orientation on the particle's surface in the various experimental conditions were deduced.