BMB 401 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Pyrrole, Globin, Heme

• School: University of Miami
• Department: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
• Course: BMB 401
• Professor: All

Document Summary

In addition to microbes, more complex organisms such as sponges and jellyfish also rely on direct diffusion of oxygen from the environment without the need for organs such as lungs/heart/blood no brains either! However, in higher-order organisms such as vertebrates, the direct diffusion of oxygen to specific tissues is not sufficient to maintain life enter globins! Globins are a family of heme-containing globular proteins involved in oxygen-binding (either as storage reservoirs or oxygen carriers) The polypeptide chain of all globins is comprised of an octad of -helices that fold into a globular-like conformation called the globin fold . Two widely occurring members of the globin family include myoglobin (mb) and hemoglobin (hb) Slide 2 - mb and hb as oxygen-binding proteins. Vertebrates rely on hb (the mainstay of red blood cells) to efficiently transport oxygen from lungs to other tissues in the body.