RAPID AND SENSITIVE OPTICAL ROTATION MEASUREMENT: KINETICS OF CONFORMATIONAL CHANGE OF RHODOPSIN INTERMEDIATE

A rapid and sensitive optical rotation (OR) measurement system using laser light has been developed to meet the demands of flash-photolysis experiments. The optimal OR resolution of the apparatus is 0.3mdeg with 10 μs time constant with single shot. The OR resolution could be easily improved less than 0.1 mdeg with accumulation of data by a kinetic processor. Applications are briefly described for the study of transient conformational change of photochemical intermediates of octopus rhodopsin following a blue light flash.