Word: hemoglobin
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Perutz and his associate at Cambridge University's medical research council unit for molecular biology--John F. Kendrew--shared the award for their work on the three-dimensional structure of hemoglobin and myoglobin...
...determination of the molecular structure of the two oxygen-carriers ranks as one of the most spectacular achievements of molecular biology. Perutz' picture of the "architecture" of hemoglobin, the protein of red blood cells, represents almost 25 years of intensive research and was made possible by his discovery of a new experimental method of X-ray analysis...
...only two proteins have yielded to X-ray analysis of this type--hemoglobin and myoglobin. The latter, which carries oxygen in the muscles, was the first whose structure was determined. Kendrew's model shows it to be a three-dimensional "lace-work of fabulous complexity," devoid of any regular or simplifying features, apart from the alpha-helix...
Perutz' X-ray studies of hemoglobin have not yet reached the same high degree of resolution and show far less detail than Kendrew's X-ray analysis of myoglobin, which Perutz says "opened a rich mine of stereochemical information about protein structure...
...they reveal that hemoglobin contains four polypeptide chains of roughly equal length, identical in pairs, and structurally complementary. Both hemoglobin and myoglobin have polypeptide chain folds; this characteristic tertiary structure may be fully determined by their amino acid sequence...