Energy Landscape of Negatively Charged BSA Adsorbed on a Negatively Charged Silica Surface

We study the energy landscape of the negatively charged protein bovine serum albumin adsorbed on a negatively charged silica surface at pH 7. We use fully atomistic molecular dynamics (MD) and steered MD (SMD) to probe the energy of adsorption and the pathway for the surface diffusion of the protein and its associated activation energy. We find an adsorption energy ∼1.2 eV, which implies that adsorption is irreversible even on experimental time scales of hours. In contrast, the activation energy for surface diffusion is ∼0.4 eV so that it is observable on the MD simulation time scale of 100 ns. This analysis paves the way for a more detailed understanding of how a protein layer forms on biomaterial surfaces, even when the protein and surface share the same electrical polarity.