pH effects on the oligomeric structure of giant Glossoscolex paulistus extracellular hemoglobin in the oxyand met-forms have been studied as well as effects of the addition of anionic sodium dodecyl sulfate surfactant. A radius of gyration of 110 Å is observed for a macromolecule. At 2 mM surfactant, the radius of gyration diminishes slightly for the oxy-form. However, the extrapolated initial scattering intensity (I(0)) decreases a factor of 2.5, indicating protein dissociation. At 20 mM surfactant, further I(0) decrease is observed, with a reduction of radius of gyration to approximately 30 Å consistent with dissociation into smaller subunits. At pH 9.0, the scattering curves are similar to that obtained for the protein in the presence of 20 mM surfactant at pH 7.0. A radius of gyration of approximately 35 Å shows that the giant hemoglobin dissociation into small subunits also occurs at alkaline pH. From the I(0) value, one can suggest that the tetramer is the main scatter at pH 9.0. At pH 7.0, the met-form dissociates to a larger extent at 2 mM surfactant as compared with the oxy-form, and the main scatters seem to be the 1/12 subunit. At pH 9.0, for the oxy-form, the addition of surfactant does not modify the scattering curve and a radius of gyration approximately 30 Å is obtained, while for the met-form some kind of aggregation is observed. Our results give support to conclude that the iron oxidation state is an important factor modulating the oligomeric dissociation.Annelid extracellular hemoglobins are giant molecules that have a characteristic hexagonal bilayer appearence in electron micrographs, high cooperativity of oxygen binding, and low iron and heme contents (1-4). The hemoglobin of the earthworm Lumbricus terrestris (HbLt) 1 is the most extensively studied annelid hemoglobin. It consists of about 180 polypeptide chains in an arrangement of two heme-containing subunits (monomer M and disulfide-bonded trimer T) and non-globin linker subunits with molecular masses in the range 24 -32 kDa. A model of quaternary structure (bracelet model) explains the properties and subunit structure of HbLt: three copies of monomer subunit and three copies of the trimer subunit form a dodecamer subunit, (abcd) 3 of about 200 kDa. Twelve such complexes of heme-containing chains are linked together by 36 heme-deficient linker chains to provide the total mass of about 3500 kDa. The 1/12 subunit of the whole protein is associated then to (abc) 3 d 3 L 3 , where L stands for the linker chains. Since 1996 a significant effort has been devoted by several laboratories to elucidate in more detail the arrangements between the subunits from the structural point of view to better understand the oxygenation of this giant hemoglobin. The three most important contributions in this research are associated with the mass spectrometry determination of the molecular masses of all subunits (3), to the three-dimensional reconstructions at a low resolution of 35 Å obtained by cryoelectron microscopy (1) and which were able to give results o...