The hypocrellin B (HB) was used as a fluorescence quencher to study the basic physical charactcristics of HB in membrane systems, including the diffusion speed of quencher from aqueous phase into membrane phase, the partition coefficient (P) of quenchtr between membrane and water, and the fluorescence quenching constant of protein (Ksv; Kq,). The experimental results show that the quenching of fluorescence in membrane protein by HB can be determined by the principle of dynamic quenching. The experimental process of fluorescence quenching was observed in detail by using the ESR technique. The signal of HB- was found to arise from an electron transfer from excited trytophan to HB.
