this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
498 points (99.4% liked)

Science Memes

10988 readers
2404 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] lambdabeta@lemmy.ca 17 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

Whenever I see this image I always wonder 2 things:

  1. What makes hemoglobin more efficient?
  2. Why do we even need these fancy molecules to transport oxygen? Can't we produce some kind of biological ampule that holds some pure O2 for consumption by the various processes that need it? We have dedicated organelle structures for similar tasks (i.e. mitochondria)
[–] InverseParallax@lemmy.world 14 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)
  1. It's sensitive to pH, so it absorbs oxygen more readily in the lungs, and releases it slightly more near tissues that need it, as they have co2 which slightly acidifies the blood in solution (h2co3).

  2. It's effective and well tuned for our biology, it doesn't bond strongly, and is well suited for the air-blood interface, unlike others that often favor water-blood or water-the fluid worms use instead.

[–] lambdabeta@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 weeks ago

Thank you. Clear, easily understood explanations of questions I always wondered. 👍🏼

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)