Printed in Great Britain PHYSIOLOGICAL PROPERTIES OF EEL HAEMOGLOBIN: HYPOXIC ACCLIMATION, PHOSPHATE EFFECTS AND MULTIPLICITY

• Main Authors: E. Weber, Gunnar Lykkeboe
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1975
• Subjects: Anguilla anguilla
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.524.7197; http://jeb.biologists.org/content/64/1/75.full.pdf

Unlike the whole blood oxygen affinity, which adapts readily to environ-mental oxygen tensions, haemoglobins prepared from normoxic- and hypoxic-acclimated eels (Anguilla anguilla) show no adaptive changes in oxygenation properties or in multiplicity. Hypoxic acclimation is, however, accompanied by a strong decrease in red cell nucleoside triphosphates, particularly guanosine triphosphate (GTP), which depresses oxygen affinity of the composite and component haemoglobins more strongly than does the concurring ATP. The effects of pH, temperature and salts on the oxygenation properties of the (isolated) haemoglobins are reported, discussed in relation to the varying environmental conditions encountered by eels, and compared with data on American and Japanese eels (A. rostrata and A. japonica, respectively).