The topography of three pore-forming proteins from the outer membrane of Escherichia coli has been explored by using two labelling techniques. Firstly, the distribution of nucleophilic residues has been investigated by selective chemical modification using arylglyoxals (for arginine residues), isothiocyanates (for lysine residues), carbodi-imides (for carboxy residues) and diazonium salts. Secondly, the membrane-embedded domains have been investigated by labelling with photoactivatable phospholipid analogues and a reagent that partitions into the membrane. Few nucleophilic groups are found to be freely accessible to pore-impermeant probes reacting in the aqueous medium. More groups are accessible to small, pore-permeant probes, suggesting that several groups of each sort are contained within the pore. In addition, there appear to be a number of arginine, lysine, carboxyl and many tyrosine residues that are rather inaccessible and that react only with small, hydrophobic probes, if at all. Amongst these more deeply buried residues there are four arginine residues and an as-yet-undetermined number of carboxy residues that appear to be essential to the structural integrity of the oligomeric molecule.
