Location of the Chromophore in Bacteriorhodopsin

We present a location for the retinylidene chromophore in dark-adapted bacteriorhodopsin based on the differences in neutron scattering between purple membrane preparations reconstituted with retinal and with deuterated retinal. The Fourier difference density map contains more peaks than expected, and additional arguments are introduced to exclude artificial peaks caused by the reconstitution techniques or the limited resolution of the diffraction data. The membrane preparation used is necessarily dark-adapted and therefore contains 13-cis- and all-trans-retinal isomers in roughly equal amounts. However, we find only a single position for both isomers. Presumably, the difference in conformation caused by isomerization around the C13-C14 double bond is minimized by rotation around other bonds. The retinal is located between α -helical segments of the protein and its nearest neighbor (intratrimer) distance is 26 angstrom; the next-nearest neighbor (intertrimer) distance is 38 angstrom.