Hemoglobin Mossbauer spectroscopy

In collaboration with Lang, Winter, Williams, and Roder have also studied the Mossbauer spectrum of the Fe(III) hemoglobin thiol-complexes. The Mossbauer spectra of these complexes are rather different from those of all other low-spin complexes. Thus, should it prove possible to substitute 57Fe in P-450, Mossbauer spectroscopy of the protein could lead to a relatively safe identification of the Fe(III) heme/thiol link. 

The presence of the stable isotope Fe to an abundance of 2.2% in all natural compounds of iron makes it possible to study hemoglobin by the methods of Mossbauer spectroscopy (/). In such experiments one exposes a sample of hemoglobin to a beam of highly monochromatic... 

Human hemoglobin oxidation with Fe(lll)-heme formation as a result of the vanadyl ion effect was observed using Mossbauer spectroscopy [ 105]. Partial oxidation of rat hemoglobin after 70 days of rats feeding with cerium chloride was detected by Mossbauer spectroscopy [106]. An attempt to study hemoglobin from patients with diabetes was done in Ref. 107. However, poor statistical rates, a low signal-to-noise ratio, and a low velocity resolution in these studies did not permit the authors to extract more detailed and exact information. 

Mossbauer study of B-thalassemia/hemoglobin E heart tissue from patients who had received no transfusion and chelation therapy was carried out in Ref. 120. Preliminary results of normal and lymphoid leukemia chicken liver and spleen tissue study using Mossbauer spectroscopy with a high velocity resolution were obtained in Ref. 132. It was observed that Mossbauer hyperfine parameters of liver and spleen samples demonstrated small changes between the corresponding normal and pathological tissues. 

Heme proteins are the first among those studied by Mossbauer spectroscopy. Varied types of heme proteins play essential roles in metabolism hemoglobin in... 

As our kinetic picture matures, the spectroscopy of the intermediate states, whether by optical spectra (Hofrichter et al., 1983), Mossbauer (Marcolin et al., 1979), electron-spin resonance (Yonetani et al., 1974), or resonance Raman (Spiro, 1981 Ondrias et al., 1983) will allow a complete picture of the simple act of cooperativity in hemoglobin, and perhaps some idea of the role that the heme group plays in truly catalytic process in biology (Sligar and Gunsalus, 1979). 

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