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Journal of Experimental Biology 128,139-158 (1987)
Published by Company of Biologists 1987

The Sulphide-Binding Protein in the Blood of the Vestimentiferan Tube-Worm, Riftia Pachyptila, is the Extracellular Haemoglobin

ALISSA J. ARP ¹, JAMES J. CHILDRESS ², and RUSSELL D. VETTER ³

¹ Marine Biology Research Division, A-002, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA; Department of Biology, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA
² Oceanic Biology Group, Department of Biology and Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA
³ Marine Biology Research Division, A-002, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA

The sulphide-binding protein that occurs in high concentrations in the vascular blood and coelomic fluid of the hydrothermal vent tube-worm Riftia pachyptila Jones is the haemoglobin. Sulphide binding does not occur at the oxygen-binding sites of the haem, but may occur via thiol-disulphide exchange at the interchain disulphide bridges on the macromolecule. We have confirmed the report that vascular blood is heterogeneous for two haemoglobins (FI and FII) that are different in M_r, but we conclude that the coelomic fluid is homogeneous for the lower M_r haemoglobin FII, in the intact, living animal. These two haemoglobins occur naturally in the living animals, and FII is not a dissociation product of the higher M_r FI. The sulphide-binding capacities of the two haemoglobin species differ by about a factor of two. Consequently, the vascular blood and the coelomic fluid also have different sulphide-binding capacities. These differences in sulphide-binding capacity may have important ramifications for the physiology of this unusual animal.

Key words: sulphide binding, haemoglobin, Riftia pachyptila

Accepted on October 2, 1986

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