Friday, March 31, 2017

Discovery of the magnetic behavior of hemoglobin: A beginning of bioinorganic chemistry #chempaperaday 274

This is a Perspective by H.B. Gray on hemoglobin and the beginning of bioinorganic chemistry. Below, you can see the Gouy balance that Linus Pauling used when studying the magnetic properties of hemoglobin and other related heme groups. I often do Evans method to determine the number of unpaired electrons for some of my complexes and believe me it is not the easiest thing to do. There are so many factors that throws you off sometimes little sometimes really big. I find it fascinating that with a Gouy balance they were able to calculate solution magnetic moments very accurately. Today with all the advanced instrumentation and techniques (X-ray, EXAFS, XANES, EPR etc.) there is still debate on the bonding of O2 to the iron center. So, some of the early work and theoretical explanations are still valid today!

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