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The reaction center (RC)-bound primary acceptor quinone QA of the photosynthetic bacterium Rhodobacter sphaeroides R26 functions as a one-electron gate. The radical anion Q~-is proposed to have an asymmetric electron distribution, induced by the protein environment. We replace the native ubiquinone-10 (UQ10) with specifically 13C-labelled UQ10, and use Q-band (35 GI-Iz) EPR spectroscopy to investigate this phenomenon in closer detail. The direct observation of the ~3C-hyperfine splitting of the gz-COmponent of UQ I 0~,-in the RC and in frozen isopropanol shows that the electron spin distribution is symmetric in the isopropanol glass, and asymmetric in the RC. Our results allow qualitative assessment of the spin and charge distribution for Q~-in the RC. The carbonyl oxygen of the semiquinone anion nearest to the S = 2 Fe2+-ion and QB is shown to acquire the highest (negative) charge density.