Study of the interaction between tosufloxacin tosylate and bovine serum albumin by multi-spectroscopic methods

The interaction of tosufloxacin tosylate (TSFX) and bovine serum albumin (BSA) was studied by fluorescence spectroscopy, UV–vis spectroscopy and FT-IR spectroscopy. The results indicated that the intrinsic fluorescence of BSA was quenched by TSFX through a static quenching mechanism, and the effective binding constants (Ka) were obtained by means of the modified Stern–Volmer equation. Thermodynamic parameters showed that electrostatic interaction was mostly responsible for the binding of TSFX to BSA. The binding distance (r) between TSFX and Trp-212 was determined to be 3.90 nm according to Föster non-radiative energy transfer theory. BSA had a single class of binding site at Sudlowʹ site I in subdomain IIA for TSFX. The effects of TSFX on the conformation of BSA were analyzed by synchronous fluorescence spectra and three-dimensional fluorescence spectra, and the results exhibited that the hydrophobicity of tryptophan microenvironment was decreased. In FT-IR spectra, Fourier self-deconvolution, secondary derivative and the curve-fitting process were carried out to obtain the components of BSA secondary structure at 298 K and 310 K. The full basic data indicated that the presence of TSFX resulted in α-helix and β-sheet changing into β-turn and random, which displayed that TSFX induced the unfolding of the polypeptides of BSA.