Reprotonation of the transiently deproto- 10-fold as the pH was lowered 1 unit, consistent with HN3 being the active species (9). This was in accord with the suggestion that the very slow rate of Schiff base protonation in D96N was not caused by a defect in proton conduction between the cytoplasmic surface and the protein interior, because the pH dependence of the rate implicated the capture of the proton at the surface as the rate-limiting step. Presumably, the hydrophobic HN3 is taken up more effectively than H+. Since in the high pH range the accelerated reprotonation occurred at a much lower molar concentration of HN3 than bacteriorhodopsin (9), such a mechanism would be accomplished only if azide shuttled rapidly, and many times in a single photocycle, between the interior of the protein and the bulk solution, much like an uncoupler of oxidative phosphorylation shuttles between the two sides of the membrane and carries protons. This is an intriguing possibility because HN3 and N3 would both have to traverse part or all of the pathway of the proton through the 10-A-long channel that leads from the cytoplasmic surface to the Schiff base (17). If correct, the details of this mechanism would affect current ideas on how protons can be transferred over long distances inside proteins.Recently, a different mechanism was suggested for the effect of azide on Schiff base protonation (18). Infrared difference spectra detected azide binding to bacteriorhodopsin through the fact that the vibrational band of N3 was depleted and the band of protonated azide appeared. Thus, azide became transiently protonated rather than deprotonated during the photocycle. The details of the formation of HN3 are not entirely clear; it seems to take place well before the reprotonation of the Schiff base, occurs also in the photocycle of the D85N mutant where little of the M state is formed and in the wild type where azide is very ineffective, and could be observed only at pH below 7.5 even though the effect of azide on M decay persists up to much higher pH. Nevertheless, the finding of protonation is contrary to what is expected if azide is the proton donor. Furthermore, single amino acid replacements in the extracellular region of the protein shifted the frequency of the band of the bound N3, suggesting that azide binds not in the cytoplasmic but in the extracellular domain. It was proposed, therefore, that azide does not act as a proton carrier. Instead, N3 binds near Asp-85 and affects the movement of protons by reorganizing a long-range hydrogenbonded chain that extends across the protein from this region to the cytoplasmic surface, disrupted in the D96N mutant by the replacement of Asp-96. Although the binding of the azide was detected through its protonation, it was suggested that the protonation of N3 is not necessarily part of this mechanism.We recognized that independent of these alternative mechanisms, the D96N mutant offers the possibility to determine the elusive pKa of the retinal Schiff base during the photocycle.The Sc...