In 1945 A fellow scientist introduced Linus Pauling to the problem of Sickle Cell when they rode together on a night train between Denver and Chicago. Four years later, in 1949, using the then-new technique of protein "moving boundary" electrophoresis, Linus Pauling and colleagues experimentally backed up Janet Watson's inference that the hemoglobin molecule of patients with sickle cell disease is different than the hemoglobin of normals. It moved differently. Sickle Cell was the first identified protein disease!
Later researchers found that the injured hemoglobin made "tactoids", or liquid crystals of protein, that were less soluable and more sticky than tactoids of normal hemoglobin.
So what was the change in hemoglobin that gave Sickle Cell patients such pain and suffering?
Continue with Sickle Cell Story.
Work your way down into the structure of hemoglobin and find out! Return to hemoglobin
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