DYNAMICAL AND STRUCTURAL PROPERTIES OF FLAVIN ADENINE DINUCLEOTIDE IN AQUEOUS SOLUTIONS

摘要

Optical properties of flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD) moiety are nowadays widely used for biotechnological applications. Given the fundamental role played by FAD, having additional information about this complex can be extremely useful to get a deeper insight in structural properties and functional role of this enzymatic co-factor. For this purpose, we investigated FAD behaviour in aqueous solutions at two pH values by means of complementary optical spectroscopic techniques (circular dichroism, infrared spectroscopy and time-resolved fluorescence). The results confirm that pH influences circular dichroism spectra. An innovative Maximum Entropy Method was adopted for time-resolved fluorescence signal analysis allowing us to evidence a three-components decay for FAD in aqueous solution with pH-depending lifetimes and relative amplitudes. All the results here reported give a more complete view of FAD's properties that can be exploited in designing new biotechnological devices.