CHARGE TRANSFER ACROSS PIGMENTED BILAYER LIPID MEMBRANE AND ITS INTERFACES

Abstract— The technique of forming bilayer lipid membranes (BLM) has made it possible to study photoreactions of pigments in an environment that is much closer to those in photosynthetic and visual membranes. A pigmented BLM system with Mg²⁺-porphyrins as membrane-bound pigments and with ferricyanide and ferrocyanide as the aqueous electron acceptor and donor, respectively, was used to illustrate the photoelectric effects due to coupled interfacial charge transfer reactions.
The steady-state continuous photoresponse was studied by means of the voltage clamp method and a null current method. The independence of the pigment conductance channel and the ionic conductance channel was demonstrated. A tunable voltage clamp method was used to study the transient pulsed photoresponses. Such a measurement permits us to characterize the photosystem in terms of an equivalent circuit model which contains a novel chemical capacitance. Molecular interpretation of this equivalent circuit model was given.
A microscopic model based on the Gouy–Chapman theory and chemical kinetics calculation leads to an equivalent circuit which is also equivalent to the previous one. Generalization of this microscopic model further leads to a physical mechanism of the generation of the early receptor potential (ERP) in visual membranes. Relevance of pigmented BLM research to photosynthesis and other disciplines was also discussed.