Study of the interaction between esculetin and human serum albumin by multi-spectroscopic method and molecular modeling

Abstract Esculetin derived from Cortex fraxin plays an important role as a traditional Chinese medicine because of its unique pharmacological properties. The interactions between esculetin and HSA were studied by fluorescence spectroscopic techniques under similar to human physiologic conditions. The binding parameters have been evaluated by fluorescence quenching methods. The results proved the mechanism of fluorescence quenching of HSA while interacting with esculetin is due to the formation of esculetin–HSA complex formation. The thermodynamic parameters like Δ H 0 and Δ S 0 were calculated to be −14.62 kJ/mol and 38.93 J/mol/K, respectively, which proves main interaction between esculetin and HSA is hydrophobic contact, but the electrostatic interaction cannot be excluded, which in agreement with the result of molecular docking study. The distance r between donor (HSA) and acceptor (esculetin) was obtained according to the Forster’s theory of non-radiative energy transfer and found to be 2.89 nm. From the high value of fluorescence anisotropy ( r  = 0.07) it was argued that the probe molecular was located in motionally restricted environment of the protein. The alterations of protein secondary structure in the presence of esculetin were confirmed by the evidences from UV, FT-IR and CD spectroscopes. In addition, the effects of common ions and amino acids on the constants of esculetin–HSA complex were also discussed.