In many ways, the 1963 conference at Airlie House was an unusual event. The meeting convincingly demonstrated that photosynthetic research, previously reported mostly at conferences of botany and/or plant physiology, had become an independent and important field of biological research. New techniques had been developed and yielded exciting new results. Electron transport, photophosphorylation a...

SINCE Soret [1883] described an ultraviolet absorption band in three of the haemoglobin series, numerous investigations have been carried out on the ultraviolet absorption spectrum of the blood pigment and its immediate derivatives. The haemoglobin compounds were investigated by Gamgee [1895] who pointed out that there was a specific ultraviolet band common to oxyhaemoglobin, reduced haemoglobi...

Haemoglobin-based oxygen carriers can undergo oxidation of ferrous haemoglobin into a non-functional ferric form with enhanced rates of haem loss. A recently developed human haemoglobin conjugated to maleimide-activated poly(ethylene glycol), termed MP4, has unique physicochemical properties (increased molecular radius, high oxygen affinity and low cooperativity) and lacks the typical hypertens...

1. Inositol hexaphosphate causes the shape of the oxidation-reduction equilibrium curve to become hyberbolic at acid pH values. 2. Inositol hexaphosphate also causes a decrease in the alkaline oxidation Bohr effect at these same pH values. 3. These results support the idea that inositol hexaphosphate causes methaemoglobin to take up the deoxyhaemoglobin quaternary structure at pH6.5.

MetHb is often defined as oxidised Hb; that is the haem iron is oxidised from the ferrous (Fe) state to the ferric (Fe) state. In addition, in metHb the sixth coordination site of the haem iron is liganded to a water molecule; this shifts the absorbance maxima from that of Hb causing metHb to be chocolate brown in colour (acid form). At pH ~8 the water molecule is replaced by a bound hydroxyl g...

Fluorescence than Ferrous Hb In the absence of haemoglobin (Hb) products, no cisparinaric Acid (PnA) fluorescence is lost. However, upon addition of ferrous Hb, there is an increasing amount of fluorescence lost. Substantial fluorescence quenching is seen on the addition of extracellular mHb, with significantly less using an intracellular product. This suggests that the cellular membrane is an ...

in the form of methaemoglobin, but was apparently accounted for as carboxyhaemoglobin after the addition of carbon monoxide and dithionite. 4. The green pigment is distinct from choleglobin, and its formation is not prevented by carbon monoxide, showing that oxyhaemoglobin is not an intermediate in the reaction. We wish to thank Mr B. A. Collett for technical assistance during a part of the work.