Hemoglobin and its muscular counterpart, myoglobin use the same iron-plus oxygen ingredients in another form doomed the microbial world to mass extinction and that created vast iron oxide, rust, deposits on planet earth.
Studies of the distribution of iron in adult males have shown that 70% of the body’s iron resides in hemoglobin; 25% in ferritin, hemosiderin and transferrin; and 4% in myoglobin. Myoglobin has the function of oxygen storage in muscle.
It must bind strongly to oxygen at very low pressures, and it is 50% saturated at 1 torr partial pressure of oxygen.
Its binding characteristics are such that it takes up oxygen from hemoglobin in the blood and releases it for use into the mitochondria where oxidative reactions occur.
Iron content or myoglobin concentration of muscle in adult anemic subjects does not differ from that in normal subjects. However, iron deficiency in children is associated with growth retardation, and serum myoglobin concentration also show changes that a parallel the level of hemoglobin concentration in the blood.
Iron in myoglobin
