Determination of acidity and nucleophilicity in thiols by reaction with monobromobimane and fluorescence detection.

Florencia Sardi (1) , Bruno Manta (2) , Stephanie Portillo-Ledesma (1, 3) , Bernard Knoops (4) , Marcelo A Comini (2) , Gerardo Ferrer-Sueta (5, 1)

1 Laboratorio de Fisicoquímica Biológica, Facultad de Ciencias
2 Institut Pasteur de Montevideo
3 Laboratorio de Química Teórica y Computacional Instituto de Química Biológica, Facultad de Ciencias
4 Laboratoire de Biologie Cellulaire
5 Center for Free Radical and Biomedical Research, Facultad de Ciensias

A method based on the differential reactivity of thiol and thiolate with monobromobimane (mBBr) has been developed to measure nucleophilicity and acidity of protein and low-molecular-weight thiols. Nucleophilicity of the thiolate is measured as the pH-independent second-order rate constant of its reaction with mBBr. The ionization constants of the thiols are obtained through the pH dependence of either second-order rate constant or initial rate of reaction. For readily available thiols, the apparent second-order rate constant is measured at different pHs and then plotted and fitted to an appropriate pH function describing the observed number of ionization equilibria. For less available thiols, such as protein thiols, the initial rate of reaction is determined in a wide range of pHs and fitted to the appropriate pH function. The method presented here shows excellent sensitivity, allowing the use of nanomolar concentrations of reagents. The method is suitable for scaling and high-throughput screening. Example determinations of nucleophilicity and pK(a) are presented for captopril and cysteine as low-molecular-weight thiols and for human peroxiredoxin 5 and Trypanosoma brucei monothiol glutaredoxin 1 as protein thiols.

Mots clés: Thiol; Catalytic cysteine; pKa; Nucleophilicity

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Florencia Sardi, Bruno Manta, Stephanie Portillo-Ledesma, Bernard Knoops, Marcelo A Comini, et al.. Determination of acidity and nucleophilicity in thiols by reaction with monobromobimane and fluorescence detection.. Analytical Biochemistry, 2013, 435 (1), pp.74-82. ⟨10.1016/j.ab.2012.12.017⟩. ⟨pasteur-00847102⟩