Protein denaturation by interaction with salts

Salts disrupt salt bridges in proteins. Salts are dissociated into cations and anions in solution, which may interact with the positive ammonium group and the negative acid group of the amino acids. This leads to the loss of quaternary and tertiary structures. As it happens for the interactions with acid and bases, an interaction between the positive and negative ions exists in the amino acid salt and the cations and anions from the added salt.

However, this interaction and subsequent denaturation are dependent on concentration. This means that low concentrated salts will disrupt very few salt bridges in the proteins and therefore they will remain stable and fully functional.