Towards a tunable tautomeric switch in azobenzene biomimetics: implications for the binding affinity of 2-(4'-hydroxyphenylazo)benzoic acid to streptavidin.

The tautomeric equilibria of 2-(4'-hydroxyphenylazo)benzoic acid (HABA) and 2-(3',5'-dimethyl-4'-hydroxyphenylazo)benzoic acid (3',5'-dimethyl-HABA) have been studied by a combination of spectroscopic and computational methods. For neutral HABA in solvents of different polarity (toluene, chloroform, DMSO, DMF, butanol, and ethanol) the azo tautomer (AT) is largely predominant. For monoanionic HABA, the hydrazone tautomer (HT) is the only detected species in apolar solvents such as toluene and chloroform, while the AT is the only detected species in water and a mixture of both tautomers is detected in ethanol. Comparison of the results obtained for HABA and its 3',5'-dimethylated derivative shows that dimethylation of the hydroxybenzene ring shifts the tautomeric preferences towards the hydrazone species. These findings have been used to examine the differences in binding affinity to streptavidin, as the lower affinity of HABA can be explained in terms of the larger energetic cost associated with the tautomeric shift to the bioactive hydrazone species. Overall, these results suggest that a balanced choice of chemical substituents, embedding environment, and pH can be valuable for exploitation of the azo-hydrazone tautomerism of HABA biomimetics in biotechnological applications.