An approach based on diffusion to study ligand-macromolecule interaction

Abstract

A new approach has been developed to study binding of a ligand to a macromolecule based on the diffusion process. In terms of the Fick's first law, the concentration of free ligand in the presence of a protein can be determined by the measurement of those ligands which are diffused out. This method is applied to the study of binding of methyl-orange to lysozyme in phosphate buffer of pH 6.2, at 30°C. The binding isotherm was determined initially, followed by application of the Hill equation to the data obtained, then binding constant and binding capacity were estimated.