• Journal of Photoscience
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.308-310
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• 2002

Bacteriorhodopsin (bR) and halorhodopsin (hR), which exist in the membrane of Halobacterium salinarum, are light-driven ion pumps. In spite of high similarity of primary and tertiary structures between bR and hR, these membrane proteins transport different ions, proton and chloride, in the opposite direction. From alignment of the amino acid sequences, Thr-89 of bR is homologous to Ser-l15 of hR from Halobacterium salinarum (shR). X-ray structure of shR has revealed that OH group of this residue directly interacts with CI$\^$-/ Thus, Ser-lI5 of shR is expected to play an important role in CI$\^$-/ binding and transport. In this study, we expressed wild type hR from Natronobacterium pharaonis (PhR) and Sl30A, which corresponds to Ser-l15 of shR, in E. coli in order to clarify binding affinity of chloride ion and photocycle reactions. From the titration with CI$\^$-/, affinity of Sl30A became quite lower than that of WT (WT 6 mM, Sl30A 89 mM). Furthermore, from the flash photolysis with pulse laser of λ$\_$max/ at 532 nm, the reaction rate of SI30A from 0 intermediate to hR ground state was found to become apparently slower than that of WT. The singular value decomposition (SVD) and global fitting analyses of the photocycles were performed to identify all photointermediates and determine the reaction rates.