Abstract
The Mössbauer effect may be applied to biology in two ways: (i) to study the electronic state of an atom in a biological molecule and (ii) as a method of chemical identification. The former can be very powerful since many biological molecules have a transition-metal atom at the active center, and hence data on its chemical state and on the electron transfer which takes place during a biochemical reaction may be obtained from magnetic measurements. Mössbauer effect measurements of the hyperfine interaction of 57Fe provide detailed information on the electron distribution in iron atoms, even when the molecular structure is not known. A review is given of some molecules to which this technique has been applied. The most extensive measurements have been made on hemoglobin and its derivatives and on the iron-sulfur proteins. In the latter, pairs of iron atoms are antiferromagnetically coupled. As an example of possible applications in analysis the Mössbauer spectra of iron from a healthy and a hemosiderosis lung are compared and found to be very different.
Published Version
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