hemocyanin/copper question

[Fujisawas Sake]

Hmm... not sure about the blood acidity. Intertidal forms do need a way to store O2 in such an extreme environment, but how would hemoglobin help buffer against acidity? In vertebrates, blood acidity is regulated by Calcium (usually at the cost of minor bone issues).

Hmm... Interesting paper...

 

[Fujisawas Sake]

Never mind... Forgot about the properties of Hemoglobin for a minute there... But even then, I would figure other buffers exist which would better regulate the amount of CO2 in the blood. Very interesting indeed...

 

[Fujisawas Sake]

Okay okay okay... bad joke back there. I doubt that hemocyanin has a per capita huge amount of copper anyway. Ceph blood isn't as efficient an O2 carriers as hemoglobin, and this may be due to using copper as the main metal.

Well, when I'm wrong, I'm wrong... Hemocyanin is a very good storage medium for Oxygen, releasing it readily when surrounding O2 levels drop. This is how the Chelicerates (Spiders and their allies) can survive in oxygen-poor envirionments. The water spiders (Family Cybaeidae) are a good example of this, even though they build a "diving bell" under water.

Maybe the reason has to do with low O2 pressure and the chemistry of hemoglobins versus hemocyanins in various ocean regions?

Have we completely gone off topic here?

 

[chrono_war01]

You know, even reading this thread makes me feel smarter.

Carry on, in the name of off topic threads and science. (And welcome back.)

 

[Fujisawas Sake]

Thanks Chrono!

Actually, (keeping with the original question on this thread) how are metals biogeochemically cycled thorough the oceans? I would figure that copper, iron, and other minerals are all absorbed though food. Squid wouldn't need that much Cu to keep alive, so a bit in each food item might be just what they need...

 

[Cairnos]

I would assume that what they need they can extract from the environment, but too much is bad!!! Even in humans we can get iron overload disease!

J

It's not just too much, it's any that isn't bound. In our blood each atom of iron is bound in a much larger complex molecular framework called a haeme complex or something similar to stop it messing up everything else it comes in contact with (An analogy would be that radioactive materials are really useful in just the right place, but you tend to carry really small amounts around in very big boxes).

One impact on how much of your metal of choice you need is how much you bleed and how well you clot, not sure what the situation with cephs is.

Someone mentioned cephs not having blood cells (learn something new everyday), this could have an impact as one of the main continual losses of iron (erm...in men at least) is when old red blood cells are broken down. If this doesn't occur perhaps the copper can just keep cycling.

 

[shipposhack]

If my pervervial octo needs some copper, I count on the crabs, etc. that I feed him to give him it, cause my fish store uses copper to treat the fish, and some probably gets into the body of the crustations(sp?).

 

[DWhatley]

My very unbioeducated mind had a light flicker on reading through this topic. Wouldn't the lack of blood cells (I had no clue anything could have blood without them) contribute to the ability of cephs to dive and rise quickly as well as go to human crushing depths without being effected by pressure. I was thinking particularly of the deep water Humbolts.

Also, if the copper based blood is especially good at storing but maybe not transporting oxygen, would this explain the ability to survive out of the water for as long as an hour?

Just thinkin ...

 

[OB]

Hi D,

The presence or lack of bloodcells has little impact on being able to handle pressure well. Ultimately, huge pressures may impact transmembrane transport in cells in general, but the most useful thing to remember is, that fluids and solids don't suffer any significant volume change due to pressure changes. That's only for gasses: this is why cetaceans' lungs completely collapse when they dive to feed on deepwater species, and why they have evolved massive oxygen storage capacity in their myoglobin laden muscle tissue.

 

[Jean]

According to the US CDC website(http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/hemochromatosis/) "Hemochromatosis occurs when the body absorbs too much iron from foods (and other sources such as vitamins containing iron). This disease causes extra iron to gradually build up in the body’s tissues and organs, a term called iron overload. If this iron buildup is untreated, it can, over many years, damage the body’s organs." sounds pretty nasty!!

Isn't lack of clotting more to do with clotting factors (or their lack) than the metal bound to your blood cells. I know in humans different types of haemophilia is generally caused by lackof different clotting factors eg Haemophilia A lacks clotting Factor VIII, Haemophilia B lacks clotting Factor IX, and Haemophilia C has a lack of the clotting Factor XI. The most common is haemophilia A.

Abalone (which also use haemocyanin) are haemophiliacs, cephs do not appear to be, otherwise we'd never get any surviving who had lost arms.

BTW cephs do have blood cells they're called amoebocytes (Witmer & Martin, 1973).

J

Witmer, A. Martin, A. W. 1973. The fine structure of the branchial heart appendage of the cephalopod Octopus dofleini martini. Cell and Tissue Research. 136(4): 545-568.

 

[Cairnos]

According to the US CDC website(http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/hemochromatosis/) "Hemochromatosis occurs when the body absorbs too much iron from foods (and other sources such as vitamins containing iron). This disease causes extra iron to gradually build up in the body’s tissues and organs, a term called iron overload. If this iron buildup is untreated, it can, over many years, damage the body’s organs." sounds pretty nasty!!

If it's caught in time you just have to bleed on a regular basis (If I'm successfully peering back through the mists of time to when I actually knew things). Assuming the blood itself is normal (I think it is) blood banks must love these guys!

 

[Jean]

If it's caught in time you just have to bleed on a regular basis (If I'm successfully peering back through the mists of time to when I actually knew things). Assuming the blood itself is normal (I think it is) blood banks must love these guys!

I'd heard that! Still sounds like a drag!

J

 

[sorseress]

I could very well be mistaken, but I think the blood they lose must be replaced by blood that isn't iron heavy.

 

[Cairnos]

I could very well be mistaken, but I think the blood they lose must be replaced by blood that isn't iron heavy.

I could (easily) be mistaken but I recall that the problem isn't with the blood production itself but more the way that thier body doesn't have the ability to stop absorbing iron when it has all it needs. The bleeding just gives the body a place to put the excess iron as it creates new blood cells