Why Blood is Red!

VMD is distributed free and developed by the NIH and is one of the most widely used pieces of molecular visualisation software in the world.

It can be downloaded for free at:
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/

The protein data band is run by the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics:

http://www.pdb.org/

Start vmd and Goto extentions, data, pdb database query

type in the accession code 1hho

and click on load into new molecule in vmd

go to graphics - represenations

delete the 'all', and type 'proteins' then hit return (all case sensitive)
There you go there's the amino acids of your hemoglobin protein!
Now lets find the magic heme that gives it that excellent ability to carry oxygen

and click on create rep (representation), now type in 'resname HEM' and change the draw method to VDW, thats van der waals (all case sensitive).

The green guy in the middle is the iron. That's where the oxygen binds. and when it does that's what gives your blood its red color.

Change the protein representation from lines to new ribbon, and change the color method from name to chain.

Now we can see that in this protein structure there are actually two molecules! each one with a heme group.

Now lets find our oxygen. Click on the hem representation and click and add 'OXY' to it, then hit return!

There you go... oxygen... without this protein, your blood would only be able to carry about 1 hundredth of the oxygen it does.

You have about a million million red blood cells pumping around your body, each one of which contains a third of a billion tetrameric hemoglobin molecules.

Each hemoglobin molecules is about a billion times smaller than you (~1nm to 1m).

Just to put that into perspective, the ratio of size of a hemoglobin molecule to you is about the same ratio as your height (1m), to the distance to the moon! (1Gm)

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Why
• blood
• is
• red
• hemoglobin
• heme
• iron
• vmd
• protein
• data
• bank
• NIH
• visual
• molecular
• dynamics
• science
• interesting
• fascinating
• moon
• size
• distance
• comparison
• you
• binding
• oxygen
• oxy
• transport
• factor
• of
• 100
• million
• billion
• life
• living
• biology
• biochemistry
• chemistry
• xray
• xmen
• x-ray
• crystal
• structure
• university
• Illinois
• theoretical
• and
• computational
• biophysics
• popular
• mutation
• mutants
• National Institutes Of Health
• Computational Biology
• Computer
• Electronics
• Software Tutorial

[Sweddude]

And some animals have white, blue, green and even pink blood.

Biology is fun.

[ayoriceball]

@jason666king He clearly says it at 2:05 to 2:15. Do you have mental problems?

[vkyle52]

IT'S RED BECAUSE GOD

[AuraHero]

@NephilimFree Or, perhaps, he's got better things to do.

[timmytheatheisttooth]

@NephilimFree He has already blown you out of the water nephi, check out his "Why do people laugh at creationsts?" video series.

[timmytheatheisttooth]

@AuraHero He's the retard who thinks that flood water escaped the Earth when god supposedly split the mid atlantic ridge and thats why we have comets and meteor craters on the moon.

[AuraHero]

@NephilimFree Which one? I've got four this semester.

[NephilimFree]

@AuraHero I am your teacher.

[AuraHero]

@NephilimFree Ummm...who are you? Seriously, people. Who is this guy?

[queerinn]

accidentally cut myself while this was loading! sweet :)

[TheStJames23]

So our blood is red because the oxygen being carried is 'rusting' the iron? Please correct me if I'm wrong.