Kinetic Measurements of Irreversible Photobleaching of Bacteriorhodopsin in A High Temperature State

Irreversible photobleaching of bacteriorhodopsin (bR), namely denaturation induced by illumination of visible light, was investigated by absorption kinetic measurements. The denaturation kinetics revealed that light illumination significantly enhanced the structural decay of bR. The kinetic analyses showed that the molecular structure of bR denatures according to a single-exponential decay, whereas irreversible photobleaching has two decay components. The decay constant of the slow component of photobleaching is almost same as that in the dark. An Arrhenius plot of the denaturation kinetic constants for the fast and slow components showed similar activation energies of approximately 19 kcal/mol.