Avaliação de nanotubos de carbono de acesso restrito na obtenção e determinação de apoproteínas

Abstract

In this work, we proposed to study the adsorption mechanisms of a new adsorbent material capable of extracting metal ions, obtained by chemical modification of carbon nanotubes (CNT) with the use of oxidizing acidic agent, followed by coating with an outer layer of bovine serum albumin (BSA), resulting in restricted access of carbon nanotubes coated with BSA (RACNT-BSA). The materials were characterized by thermogravimetric analysis (TG) in order to evaluate thermal stability, infrared spectroscopy (IR) to confirm the functional groups involved in the oxidation processes of CNT and covering the same with BSA, elemental analysis (CHN), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to evaluate the morphology and powder X-ray diffraction. To facilitate the understanding of the interaction mechanisms among RACNT-BSA and BSA in solution and metal ions, the isoelectric points (Ip) (isoelectric point) of all materials were determined. To study the possible interaction mechanisms between RACNT-BSA and solubilized proteins, the BSA solutions (3 μg. mL-¹) in phosphate buffer with a pH in the range 2.2 to 7.0 were percolated through the RACNT-BSA. Thus, there is a relationship between the adsorptive process in the RACNT-BSA and the protein Ip’s, i.e., we proposed a working mechanism for RACNT-BSA dependent on the pH solution and on the type of percolated protein. When a protein solution is percolated through a SPE cartridge containing RACNT-BSA and the pH solution is higher than the protein Ip, both solubilized protein and BSA layer (from RACNT-BSA) are negatively ionized. Therefore, an electrostatic repulsion prevents the interaction between the solubilized proteins and the surface of RACNT-BSA. It was found that metal ions can be adsorbed on RACNT-BSA, but the adsorptive processes can be affected according the changing of pH solution, and the choice of the appropriate buffer. The application to catalase protein, we found that while there is no adsorption of this protein on RACNT-BSA, the Fe ions, covalently linked to it, are attracted and adsorbed on RACNT-BSA, requiring, however, the denaturation of protein. These results showed us that the RACNT-BSA material is promising for the apoprotein’s formation.