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Name: Courtney
Status: Student
Age: 16
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: N/A
Question:
What is the material that enables animal hemoglobin to carry oxygen?


Replies:
The careful arrangement of the protein (hundreds of amino acids long) and the four iron atoms in it. If the protein is off by one amino acid it can radically change the molecules ability to carry oxygen properly...sickle cell anemia, has only one amino acid change out of hundreds.

Peter Faletra Ph.D.
Senior Science Advisor
Office of Science
Department of Energy

That would be iron.

Don Yee

Hemoglobin is a protein holding an iron atom in such a way that a molecule of oxygen from the air attaches to it. The oxygen is only weakly attached to the iron atom, so that when the hemoglobin is carried to a relatively oxygen-poor environment inside the body, the oxygen molecule detaches and is taken up by the cell waiting to receive it.

Richard E. Barrans Jr., Ph.D.
Assistant Director
PG Research Foundation, Darien, Illinois


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