>>If we switched iron for copper, then instead of blood red, we’d have a brilliant blue.

Interesting you'd post this now.

Recently, I've been trying to wrap my head around cytochrome c oxidase, a copper-based protein critical to mitochondrial respiration.

I’ve read that anoxia (lack of oxygen) can down-regulate cytochrome c’s oxygen carrying capability - and I’ve run into some mention that there’s a competition between the oxidase form and the porphyrin one, with an 8-fold change in oxygen carrying capacity - which might be the down-regulation they’re talking about.

And maybe I’m confused. Feel free to make fun of me. :-)

Anyway, this matters (to me) because the reduced mitochondrial respiration might explain the cascade of cell death that happens post infarction.

Francisco Gonzales-Lima has done some interesting work using methylene blue as an electron donor to ‘rescue’ mitochondrial function.

Just trying to really understand how all that works.

Any thoughts?

Also, as of this AM, Medium’s comment editor no longer allows me to embed links so: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3019692/