Subunit composition of hemocyanins of Callinectes sapidus: phenotypes from naturally hypoxic waters and isolated oligomers.

The electrophoretic banding pattern of hemocyanin monomers in blue crabs caught in natural waters indicate that the phenotypes associated with normoxia or hypoxia in the laboratory can also be found in those conditions in nature. PAGE of pure fractions of 1 x 6-mers isolated by HPLC revealed only the two invariant plus one slightly variable band. In contrast, the 2 x 6-mer fraction contained those three plus the three highly variable bands. These results support the hypothesis formulated by earlier workers that monomers other than the linker chains stabilize the 2 x 6-meric conformation. However, correlations of 2 x 6-mer content with various combinations of monomer contents suggest that one of the three variable chains has little or no stabilizing effect.