A kinetic model for describing the effect of proteins on the air-water interface tension

Abstract

The main objective of this work was to develop a kinetic model to describe the variation of the surface tension in an air-water interface due to the adsorption of proteins from different origins and to identify quantitatively the relevant parameters. It was considered that the processes of adsorption, unfolding and reordering of the protein molecule in the interface occur simultaneously. The model used in the present work to calculate the surface tension postulates the existence of two simultaneous processes, adsorption and protein rearrangement represented with an equation of first order with two exponential components. The relevant parameter of the equation are ka and kr—the rate constants of the two first order kinetic phases that correspond to both conformational states of the protein, adsorption and rearrangement during the process of variation of the surface tension, and the amplitude parameters Aa and Ar. The results suggest that the kinetic model for the variation of the surface tension of protein solutions proposed in this work, with two simultaneous first order processes, is more appropriate than previous models to describe such variation.