Word: hemoglobin
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...tangled mass of tubing, disks and light bulbs unveiled before a packed meeting of the Royal Society of scientists in London looked for all the world like an outsize example of abstract sculpture. In fact, it was a precise piece of technical art. It was a model of the hemoglobin molecule, the vital constituent of blood corpuscles, and it was the result of nearly 30 years of effort by Cambridge University Molecular Biologist Max Perutz...
...those three decades, Perutz discovered much of what is now known about the hemoglobin molecule, which he rightly calls "an incredible apparatus." Scientists have long known that hemoglobin in the bloodstream carries oxygen from the lungs to the body tissues and returns waste products from the tissues to be exhaled from the lungs. But not until Perutz learned how to put the pieces of his intricate puzzle together did anyone begin to understand just how hemoglobin does...
...cells apparently have the same genetic information. That is, red blood cells, which produce hemoglobin, have the same information as muscle cells, although obviously have widely different functions. Cell specialization thus may depend on the process by which the cell chooses which genetic information to copy into RNA and, perhaps more importantly, to transport and use in the cytoplasm...
...standards, improving them may also kill lakes. The problem is that treated sewage contains nitrate and phosphate, fertilizing substances widely used in agriculture that make things worse in overfertilized lakes. Though nitrate is normally harmless in the body, intestinal bacteria can turn it into nitrite, a compound that hinders hemoglobin from transporting oxygen to the tissues, causing labored breathing and even suffocation...
Kasperak rallied through most of the week. But then he suffered a serious setback. Because of his poor liver function, an excess of bilirubin (a by-product of hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying protein in blood) began to build up in his system, and doctors scheduled another massive transfusion to remove impurities from his blood. Through it all, the one organ that consistently worked best was his acquired heart...