Abstract

The nature of binding mechanism of toluidine blue O (TBO) with chicken egg white lysozyme was studied comprehensively by various spectroscopic and computational methods. Both steady state and time-resolved fluorescence studies unambiguously point to the prevalence of static quenching mechanism in lysozyme-TBO system. Thermodynamic parameters revealed that the association of TBO with lysozyme was a spontaneous process in which hydrophobic and hydrogen bond interactions played a pivotal role in the binding process. The secondary and tertiary conformational changes of lysozyme in the presence of TBO were unraveled using absorption, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and circular dichroism (CD) techniques. Molecular docking studies of lysozyme-TBO system substantiated the findings of site marker experiment and revealed TBO adjacent to Trp-63 and Trp-108 residues of lysozyme. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation studies of lysozyme-TBO system indicate a stable and effective complexation of TBO with lysozyme. It is hoped that the results presented here will enable further understanding of TBO toxicity.