Scientific Publications
Quercetin solubilisation in micelles: its use as a probe for bile salt and sodium dodecyl sulphate micelles
Food Chemistry, 211, 356-364
To understand the bioaccessibility of the flavonoid quercetin we studied its interaction with bile salt micelles. The environmental sensitivity of quercetin’s UV-visible absorption spectrum gave information about quercetin partitioning. Two quercetin absorption peaks gave complementary information: Peak A (240–280 nm) on the intermicellar phase and Peak B (340–440 nm) on the micellar phase. Thus, by altering pH, we showed that only non-ionised quercetin partitions into micelles. We validated our interpretation by studying quercetin’s interaction with SDS micelles. Pyrene fluorescence and the quercetin UV-visible spectra show that the adsorption site for pyrene and quercetin in bile salt micelles is more hydrophobic than that in SDS micelles. Also, both quercetin and pyrene reported a higher critical micelle concentration for bile salts than SDS. Our method of using a flavonoid as an intrinsic probe, is generally applicable to other lipophilic bioactives, whenever they have observable environmental dependent properties.
Food Chemistry, 211, 356-364
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