A fluorescent fatty acid probe, DAUDA, selectively displaces two myristates bound in human serum albumin.

11-(Dansylamino) undecanoic acid (DAUDA) is a dansyl-type fluorophore and has widely used as a probe to determine the binding site for human serum albumin (HSA). Here, we reported that structure of HSA-Myristate-DAUDA ternary complex and identified clearly the presence of two DAUDA molecules at fatty acid (FA) binding site 6 and 7 of HSA, thus showing these two sites are weak FA binding sites. This result also show that DAUDA is an appropriate probe for FA site 6 and 7 on HSA as previous studied, but not a good probe of FA binding site 1 that is likely bilirubin binding site on HSA.