Chlortetracycline, a fluorescent robe of its own active transport, has been used to study lateral phase sep- Tetracyclines are broad-spectrum antibiotics that bind to the bacterial ribosome, where they specifically inhibit protein biosynthesis (1, 2). The antibiotic is most likely accumulated within bacteria by an active transport system, which may account for the specificity of the drug (3). In several recent papers, we have shown that tetracyclines can be used as fluorescent probes of their own transport through bacterial membranes (4-7). Qualities that make them ideal for transport studies are the specificity of binding of the probe to the transport site in the bacterial membrane and the large increase in the quantum yield of fluorescence when tetracyclines bind to these apolar regions of the membrane through a divalent cation complex. The latter property results in great sensitivity for detection of the probe without perturbation of membrane integrity. Monitoring the tetracycline fluorescence allows one to follow antibiotic accumulation continuously. We have previously used the fluorescence to demonstrate saturation of the tetracycline transport system in Staphylococcus aureus and to examine the role of the membrane lipid in this transport system (4, 5). The temperature dependence of the transport rate, as measured by fluorescence enhancement, and tetracycline mobility changes, as measured by fluorescence polarization, were used in these studies (5). (14). Transesterification of the fatty acids with boron trifluoride/methanol followed by gas chromatography on a diethylene glycol succinate column at 1700 showed that the major fatty acids of these cells were the branched-chain fatty acids, anteiso and iso-C13