Fast components of the absorption changes of bacteriorhodopsin at 275 nm and 296 nm.

A very fast component (life time 0.2 microsecond) was found in the flash-induced absorption changes of bacteriorhodopsin (bR) at 275 nm and 296 nm. This result was obtained by measuring the absorption changes at well defined delay times after the exciting laser flash (590 nm, 20 ns pulse duration). For this purpose a second laser flash was used as the monitoring beam. The very fast absorption changes of bR in the UV range are due to the rapid perturbation of the opsin moiety near the chromophore, as a result of the all-trans to 13-cis isomerization of the retinal taking place on the same time scale.