A major source of iron in man’s diet is found in the form of hemoglobin. Previous investigations of the absorption of hemoglobin iron and of hemoglobin itself were performed with radio-labelled, pure hemoglobin. There was evidence of the absorption of hemoglobin iron as well as heme, but not of hemoglobin. As hemoglobin will be ingested together with other proteins, it was decided to use unlabelled hemoglobin prepared from crude red cell sediment without chromatography or other purification. By means of polyacrylamide-gel disc electrophoresis, immunoelectrophoresis, immunofluorescence and gel filtration, it was shown that, in rats treated with ethanol, hemoglobin can be absorbed and transported to the liver as a hemoglobin-haptoglobin complex.
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