The red coloring matter in the body fluids and tissues of diverse animals has perennially excited the curiosity of men. During the last hundred years, gradually at first and then with increasing rapidity, there has emerged a rather complete phenomenological description of the respiratory function of this substance, hemoglobin. Recently, with the advent of the determination of the three-dimensional molecular structure of sperm whale myoglobin, the molecular mechanisms responsible for hemoglobin function have begun to be elucidated. These developments are the realization of the hopes and dreams of investigators who first obtained good X-ray photographs of protein crystals in the 1930's (Hodgkin and Riley, 1968). Not only is X-ray diffraction analysis providing structural insight about protein function, but in addition it is helping to provide unexpected information about the biological evolution of protein molecules.
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Love et al. (1972) studied this question.