Sandbox 17
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The Hasa hemophore from Serratia Marcescens is a most unique and sinister protein thqt grabs away the heme and its iron from the homoglobin of those unfortunate humans and animals that happen to become infected by this bug. Indeed, the ConSurf web site at consurf.tau.ac.il has shown that this protein's sequence is close to being unique in the sequence database. For more information please see page 1dk0.
One of the major problems that micro-organisms have is to extract iron in its ferric and ferrous ionic forms from the scarce environment. While many creatures that live in soil, lakes and other natural settings utilize small organic carrier molecules called siderophores; dangerous disease organisms that infect humans and animals take advantage of the iron stored in the infected host, whose iron is mainly in heme groups (hemoglobin) and iron-sulfer complexes. Hasa is an example of a protein called a hemophore that seizes away the hemes including their iron from hemoglobin and myoglobin, by complexing and heme with significantly much greater affinity (eg. binds it much more tightly).--Clifford_Felder 15:32, 2 April 2008 (IDT)