Purple membrane (ma.. = 568 nm) can be converted to blue membrane (kma. = 605 nm) by either acid titration or deionization. Partially delipidated purple membrane, containing only 25% of the initial lipid phosphorus, could be converted to a blue form by acid titration but not by deionization. This reversible transition of delipidated mem, brane did not require the presence of other cations, and the pK of the color change that in native membrane under similar conditions is between 3.0 and 4.0 was shifted to 1.4. We conclude that the purple-to-blue transition is controlled by proton concentration only and that, in native membranes, the cations act only by raising the low surface pH generated by the acidic groups of the lipids. The observation that extraction of lipids from deionized native membrane converts its color from blue to purple further confirms this conclusion. The two states of the membrane probably reflect two preferred conformations of bacteriorhodopsin, which are controlled by protonation changes at the surface of the membrane and differ slightly in the spatial distribution of charges around the chromophore.The retinylidene protein bacteriorhodopsin (bR) functions as a light-driven proton pump (1, 2). It is the only protein in the purple membrane (pm) and is arranged in a hexagonal lattice (3, 4). Purple membrane contains a variety of diether lipids, amounting to about 25% by weight, that fill the spaces between bR molecules in the lattice and are all in close contact with the protein (3-6). Most of the lipids are acidic (80%); 70% are phospholipids, mostly the diether analogue of phosphatidylglycerophosphate, and 30% are glycosulfolipids (7,8).Acidification or removal of cations from pm suspensions shifts the absorption maximum of bR from 568 to 605 nm (1, 9-15). The chromophores in these acid or deionized blue membranes are indistinguishable in absorption and resonance Raman spectra (16). The color of bR is apparently controlled by the distribution of charges in the chromophore, specifically protonation and a charge pair or dipole near the P-ionone ring that cause a large red shift of the retinal absorbance; a counterion-i.e., a negatively charged amino acid residue near the protonated Schiff base-stabilizes it with a concomitant reduction of the red shift (17-19). Protonation of this counterion has been suggested as the cause for the purple-to-blue transition. The purple color returns upon further acidification and formation of this "acid purple" chromophore has been attributed to restoration of the negative charge by binding of an anion at the site protonated in the purple-to-blue transition (11) or to protonation of a second negatively charged group (12).The original purple color of the membrane can be restored by addition of salt and alkalinization. Binding of three to five cations to specific sites is generally believed to be required for the color change (13,14,20,21) and the binding sites with the highest affinity may not affect the color change (21). Red shifts of the bR absorption ba...