Analysis of β-carotene absorbance for studying structural properties of human plasma low-density lipoproteins

Abstract A novel spectrophotometric assay for monitoring structural rearrangements of native low-density lipoproteins (LDL) is proposed. The approach is based on the analysis of the visible light absorbance maximum of lipoproteins at approximately 461 nm assigned to β-carotene situated in the hydrophobic parts of LDL. It offers a direct method to study the surface–interior coupling of the lipoprotein particle under physiological conditions. The detected signal is intrinsic to LDL and responsible for the most of the β-carotene signal from the whole plasma. The negligible interference of β-carotene absorbance due to the high-density lipoproteins is experimentally verified. Since β-carotene absorbance belongs to the visible spectral region, no spectral overlapping/artifacts in plasma are expected. The signal sensitivity has been studied through conformational changes of LDL induced by ionic strength, by temperature, and by ligand binding. The results of caffeine binding to LDL indicate that there could be only one dominant type of binding site for caffeine on LDL particles. It can be concluded that visible spectrum characteristics of β-carotene molecules offer advantages in LDL ligand binding studies which can possibly be extended to monitor the interactions of LDL directly in plasma.