Skip Navigation

American Zoologist 1997 37(6):604-611; doi:10.1093/icb/37.6.604
© 1997 by The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology
This Article
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Request Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by MANGUM, C. P.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

Adaptation of the Oxygen Transport System to Hypoxia in the Blue Crab, Callinectes sapidus1

CHARLOTTE P. MANGUM2
Department of Biology, College of William & Mary Williamsburg, Virginia 23187-8795

Correspondence: 2 E-mail: cpmang{at}facstaff.wm.edu

Among the oxygen carrying proteins, two groups are known to adapt to environmental challenges in the adult stage. Both vertebrate hemoglobins and arthropod hemocyanins adapt to chronic hypoxia by responding to the actions of allosteric co-factors. The design strategy, however, differs fundamentally in the two groups. Even within the arthropods, chelicerate and crustacean hemocyanins respond to co-factors very differently. Only in the crustaceans does the oxygen carrier adapt by shifts in intrinsic molecular properties. In hypoxic blue crabs, increases in the ratio of the primitive 1 x 6-meric oligomer bring about a higher oxygen affinity relative to that in normoxic animals, in which greater proportions of the derived 2 x 6-meric oligomer are responsible for a lower oxygen affinity


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.