Abstract
The mechanism of interaction of cyanocobalamin (CB) with bovine serum albumin (BSA) has been investigated by spectrofluorometric and circular dichroism methods. Association constant for the CB-BSA system showed that the interaction is non-covalent in nature. Binding studies in the presence of an hydrophobic probe, 8-anilino-l-naphthalene sulphonic acid, sodium salt (ANS) showed that there is hydrophobic interaction between CB and ANS and they do not share common sites in BSA. Stern-Volmer analysis of fluorescence quenching data showed that the fraction of fluorophore (protein) accessible to the quencher (CB) was close to unity indicating thereby that both tryptophan residues of BSA are involved in drug-protein interaction. The rate constant for quenching, greater than $10^{10}$ $M^{-1}$ $s^{-1}$, indicated that the drug binding site is in close proximity to tryptophan residue of BSA. Thermodynamic parameters obtained from data at different temperatures showed that the binding of CB to BSA involves hydrophobic bonds predominantly. Significant increase in concentration of free drug was observed for CB in presence of paracetamol. Circular dichroism studies revealed the change in helicity of BSA due to binding of CB to BSA.