Neither the influence of high shear rates nor the impact of cavitation on protein aggregation is fully understood. The effect of cavitation bubble collapse-derived hydroxyl radicals on the aggregation behavior of human serum albumin (HSA) was investigated. Radicals were generated by pumping through a micro-orifice, ultra-sonication, or chemically by Fenton's reaction. The amount of radicals produced by the two mechanical methods (0.12 and 11.25 nmol/(L min)) was not enough to change the protein integrity. In contrast, Fenton's reaction resulted in 382 nmol/(L min) of radicals, inducing protein aggregation. However, the micro-orifice promoted the formation of soluble dimeric HSA aggregates. A validated computational fluid dynamic model of the orifice revealed a maximum and average shear rate on the order of 108 s-1 and 1.2 × 106 s-1, respectively. Although these values are among the highest ever reported in the literature, dimer formation did not occur when we used the same flow rate but suppressed cavitation. Therefore, aggregation is most likely caused by the increased surface area due to cavitation-mediated bubble growth, not by hydroxyl radical release or shear stress as often reported.
Keywords: Downstream processing; Protein aggregation; Protein denaturation; Protein purification; Unfolding.