Closing in on bacteriorhodopsin: Progress in understanding the molecule

Bacteriorhodopsin is the best understood ion transport protein and has beco me a paradigm for membrane proteins in general and transporters in particul ar. Models up to 2.5 Angstrom resolution of bacteriorhodopsin's structure h ave been published during the last three years and are basic for understand ing its function. Thus one focus of this review is to summarize and to comp are these models in detail. Another focus is to follow the protein through its catalytic cycle in summarizing more recent developments. We focus on li terature published since 1995; a comprehensive series of reviews was publis hed in 1995 (112).