Magnetic birefringence studies of dilute purple membrane suspensions.

We have observed the magnetically induced orientation of purple membrane suspensions by measuring the birefringence as a function of concentration and temperature at fields up to 10.5 Tesla (T). At these fields, the orientation approaches saturation even in dilute solutions; therefore, the birefringence data, together with an estimate of the membrane size distribution obtained from electron microscopy, permits one to determine the diamagnetic susceptibility anisotropy. We find delta chi mole = 1.2 +/- 0.3 X 10(-3) erg G-2mol-1 of bacteriorhodopsin. If delta chi were due only to the oriented peptide bonds of the transmembrane alpha helices, this experimental value would indicate that delta K, the anisotropy per mole of peptide bonds, is considerably larger than previously suggested. On the other hand, the large value for delta chi mole of bacteriorhodopsin can also be explained by a net orientation of the aromatic amino acid side chains of bacteriorhodopsin with their planes perpendicular to the membrane surface. In addition, the present data analysis demonstrates the critical dependence of the calculated delta chi value on the values for the membrane size distribution.