PNB 2250 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Oxygen Toxicity, Bohr Effect
15 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Understand the factors that affect gas transport. Understand function & structure of respiratory proteins. Understand the factors that affect gas molecules binding to respiratory proteins. Diffusion is inherently slow over centimeters of distance. Cannot make the lung so big that all cells that need oxygen are nearby. Factors of gas transport: limited by diffusion. No pumps: large animals need help getting gas to all their cells. A physical delivery problem: circulatory systems. Methods of gas transportation: as a gas. Huge advantage (enormous capacity: converted to something else, capacity. Gas transport proteins: as life evolved, oxygen began to form in the atmosphere. Oxygen is acutely toxic to anaerobic life. Development of proteins to reduce oxygen toxicity by electron reduction. Use of metals iron and copper made oxygen less dangerous. Gas transport requirements: all transport proteins must have an oxygen-reactive center. Usually, but not always a metal: reactive center must weakly bond to oxygen.
