Interaction of erucic acid with bovine serum albumin using a multi-spectroscopic method and molecular docking technique

Overconsumption of erucic acid has been shown to cause heart damage in animals. The aim of this study is to evaluate the binding behaviour between erucic acid and bovine serum albumin using multi-spectroscopic methods and a molecular docking technique under physiological conditions. We find that erucic acid can quench the intrinsic fluorescence of BSA by dynamic quenching and there is a single class of binding site on BSA. In addition, the thermodynamic functions ΔH and ΔS are 119.14 kJ mol−1 and 488.89 J mol−1 K−1, indicating that the hydrophobic force is a main acting force. Furthermore, the protein secondary structure changes with an increase in the content of α-helix, measured using synchronous fluorescence, circular dichroism and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopies. The molecular docking results illustrate that erucic acid can bind with the subdomain IIA of the BSA, and hydrogen bonding is also an acting force.