Conductance Changes in Bovine Serum Albumin Caused by Drug-Binding Triggered Structural Transitions

Proteins, due to their binding selectivity, are promising candidates for fabricating nanoscale bio-sensors. However, the influence of structural change on protein conductance caused by specific protein-ligand interactions and disease-induced degeneration still remains unknown. Here, we excavated the relationship between circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy and conductive atomic force microscopy (CAFM) to reveal the effect of the protein secondary structures changes on conductance. The secondary structure of bovine serum albumin (BSA) was altered by the binding of drugs, like amoxicillin (Amox), cephalexin (Cefa), and azithromycin (Azit). The CD spectroscopy shows that the α-helical and β-sheet content of BSA, which varied according to the molar ratio between the drug and BSA, changed by up to 6%. The conductance of BSA monolayers in varying drug concentrations was further characterized via CAFM. We found that BSA conductance has a monotonic relation with α-helical content. Moreover, BSA conductance seems to be in connection with the binding ability of drugs and proteins. This work elucidates that protein conductance variations caused by secondary structure transitions are triggered by drug-binding and indicate that electrical methods are of potential application in protein secondary structure analysis.