Impact of polyelectrolytes on lysozyme properties in colloidal dispersions

In this work, we investigated the impact of different polyelectrolytes (polyacrylic acid, polystyrene sulfonate, dextran sulfate, and chondroitin sulfate) on lysozyme properties when they form colloidal complexes. To this aim, we characterized (i) the size and stability of the different polyelectrolyte-lysozyme complexes upon addition of NaCl (different concentrations) by diffusion light scattering, and (ii) the structure and accessibility of lysozyme active site in such complexes by fluorescence quenching and time resolved fluorescence analysis. We then used these results to explain the antibacterial activity variations among colloidal complexes and compared with free lysozyme. Our findings show that colloidal complexes that are more prone to swelling (i.e., lysozyme complexed with polystyrene sulfonate) are less stable upon salt addition. In these colloids, the enzymatic site is also more accessible. However, the antibacterial activity does not depend on the swelling properties because no large structural modification of the active site occurs.