Study of conformational changes and protein aggregation of bovine serum albumin in presence of Sb(III) and Sb(V)

PLoS One. 2017 Feb 2;12(2):e0170869. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0170869. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

Antimony is a metalloid that affects biological functions in humans due to a mechanism still not understood. There is no doubt that the toxicity and physicochemical properties of Sb are strongly related with its chemical state. In this paper, the interaction between Sb(III) and Sb(V) with bovine serum albumin (BSA) was investigated in vitro by fluorescence spectroscopy, and circular dichroism (CD) under simulated physiological conditions. Moreover, the coupling of the separation technique, asymmetric flow field-flow fractionation, with elemental mass spectrometry to understand the interaction of Sb(V) and Sb(III) with the BSA was also used. Our results showed a different behaviour of Sb(III) vs. Sb(V) regarding their effects on the interaction with the BSA. The effects in terms of protein aggregates and conformational changes were higher in the presence of Sb(III) compared to Sb(V) which may explain the differences in toxicity between both Sb species in vivo. Obtained results demonstrated the protective effect of GSH that modifies the degree of interaction between the Sb species with BSA. Interestingly, in our experiments it was possible to detect an interaction between BSA and Sb species, which may be related with the presence of labile complex between the Sb and a protein for the first time.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Antimony / chemistry
  • Antimony / toxicity*
  • Cattle
  • Chromatography, Gel
  • Circular Dichroism
  • Fractionation, Field Flow
  • Glutathione / chemistry
  • Glutathione / pharmacology
  • Humans
  • In Vitro Techniques
  • Protein Aggregates / drug effects*
  • Protein Conformation / drug effects*
  • Protein Structure, Secondary / drug effects
  • Serum Albumin, Bovine / chemistry*
  • Serum Albumin, Bovine / drug effects*
  • Spectrometry, Fluorescence

Substances

  • Protein Aggregates
  • Serum Albumin, Bovine
  • Antimony
  • Glutathione

Grants and funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from FONDECYT (project 1150528) and the Spanish Ministry of Education (MINECO-13-CTQ2013-49032-C2-1-R) and Principado de Asturias (FC-15-GRUPIN14-092). Agilent Technologies Foundation is also acknowledged. M. Verdugo also thanks to CONICYT (project 21120558) for doctoral and research-travel fellowships. Diego Bouzas-Ramos and Mario Menéndez-Miranda acknowledge the Ph.D. grants (BP14-137 and BP12-046, respectively) from Principado de Asturias (Spain).