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Monomer diffusion and polymer alignment in domains of sickle hemoglobin
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Monomer diffusion and polymer alignment in domains of sickle hemoglobin

M R Cho and F A Ferrone
Biophysical journal, v 63(1), pp 205-214
Jul 1992
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0006-3495(92)81595-3
PMID: 1420868
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0006-3495(92)81595-3View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

Hemoglobin, Sickle - chemistry Temperature Biophysical Phenomena Models, Chemical Humans Light Polymers - chemistry Protein Conformation Scattering, Radiation Biophysics Kinetics Spectrophotometry
We have used polarized absorbance to observe the process of monomer accretion and polymer alignment which occurs in domains of sickle hemoglobin that are formed and maintained by laser photolysis. These diffusion and alignment processes have been studied as a function of initial concentration and temperature (initial and final), as well as beam size and domain number. Monomers are found to diffuse into growing polymer domains with a rate that is essentially temperature and concentration independent, but which depends on the size of the final domain boundaries, and the number of domains within a boundary. The final concentrations achieved are very close to those found in packed centrifugation experiments (50-55 g/dl) and are approximately independent of starting temperature and concentration. The influx of monomers is accompanied by polymer alignment, and the amount aligned is proportional to the amount diffused throughout the process. We propose that polymer alignment controls the influx of added monomers into the growing domain.

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11 citations in Web of Science
12 citations in Scopus

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Web of Science research areas
Biophysics
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