Preliminary ultrasonication affects the rate of the bacteriorhodopsin bleaching and the effectiveness of the reconstitution process in bacterioopsin.

The formation process of polymer films based on bacteriorhodopsin (BR) analogs requests a high amount of BR samples one time only. The common technique for apomembrane formation (preparation of bacterioopsin, BO) is not designed to be operated with high concentrations and high volumes of BR, so the use of this technique results in a low rate of BR bleaching. To accelerate the process of BR bleaching preliminary sonication was used. It was used just as preliminary sonication before bleaching of BR samples, so also sonication was used before reconstitution of resulted BO samples. These modifications of the common technique lead to an acceleration of BR bleaching and an increase in effectiveness of reconstitution of BO in comparison with the nonmodified technique. The quantitative results of sonication's effect on the bleaching acceleration and the effectiveness of reconstitution are different depending on the BR strains.
(© 2014 The American Society of Photobiology.)