Talk:Hemoglobin
Paragraph four wants attention: it's a pointless distinction between "broken down" and "broken up." But the paragraph makes it sound as if the hemoglobin and a red blood cell are always recycled at the same time. So it would seem that each red blood cell has a certain amount of hemoglobin that stays with it for the duration of that cell's life? Is that the case? (interesting, but not as cute as monogamous ducks.) :-D
Point taken. I hope it's a bit clearer now. On your other point, human red blood cells I believe are pretty much stuck with their initial load of hemoglobin. Mammalian red blood cells don't have cell nuclei, so they can't be doing much de novo synthesis of any protein. Reptile blood cells do have nuclei (or Jurassic Park would have lost its major plot premise), so they might do synthesis. I'm not a herpetologist so I don't know.
- Just a side note: The classification of Dinosaurs is a hotly debated topic. They are not what we would call reptiles because of their activity levels and other physio/morpho-logical differences that can be inferred/ascertained from the fossil record. In fact they are closer to birds in many respects. So we can not say whether or not the RBCs of of dinos had nuclei or not. However, all blood from almost every animal has white blood cells in it, that almost without expection all have nuclei with at least some DNA. maveric149
The paragraph recently moved to the bottom probably should be used as the introduction to a new topic called oxygen transport. - Dwmyers
I just added the part about carbon dioxide. I know that it is not constructed very well but I thought it was an important point. Do you think the bohr effect deserves a page of it own? or should it just be defined in this article? DiJay
Question: Since heme is formed in the mitochondria, and mammalian erythrocytes do not have mitochondria in order to provide more space for hemoglobin, how exactly is hemoglobin made for the red blood cell? Especially without a nucleus to create any mRNA.
- Immature mammalian erythrocytes have both nuclei and mitochondria: the hemoglobin carried in the mature cell is made in the immature cell, before it loses them. - Nunh-huh 04:07, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)