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Under appropriate conditions, hemoglobin dissociates into four subunits

Biology

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Under appropriate conditions, hemoglobin dissociates into four subunits. The isolated alpha subunit binds oxygen, but the O2-saturation curve is hyperbolic rather than sigmoidal. In addition, the binding of oxygen to the isolated alpha subunit is not affected by H+, CO2, or BPG. What do these observations indicate about the source of cooperativity in hemoglobin?