Tryptophan fluorescence and homology in lysozymes and alpha-lactalbumins

Steady-state and transient fluorescence properties of turkey lysozyme, human lysozyme, and bovine alpha-lactalbumin are compared to those of hen lysozyme and hen lysozyme derivatives. Tryptophan fluorescence appears to be sufficiently sensitive to environment so that a small divergence in sequence can alter the fluorescence properties of one or more of the sequentially equivalent tryptophans in these proteins. Thus, an understanding of the fluorescence of one protein cannot necessarily be extended to a homologous protein in a simple manner, and the use of fluorescence to document structural similarity in homologous proteins is likely to be difficult. In addition, the results with alpha-lactalbumin and human lysozyme suggest that multiple conformations of these proteins exist in solution, and that interconversion of these conformations is slow compared to the fluorescence lifetime.