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Nitric oxide's reactions with hemoglobin: a view through the SNO-storm

Nature Medicine volume 9, pages 496–500 (2003)Cite this article

S-nitroso-hemoglobin (SNOHb) has been proposed to regulate blood flow and tissue oxygenation through allosterically controlled binding and delivery of nitric oxide (NO) and oxygen in the vasculature. This precept and the experiments that test it have provoked both ardent support and expanding dissent. An alternative view suggests that a physiologically tightly regulated balance of NO scavenging by hemoglobin and NO production by endothelial cells determines NO bioavailability.

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Figure 1: Opposing models for the role of hemoglobin in regulating NO bioavailability.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Critical Care Medicine Department of the Warren G. Magnuson Clinical Center, National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA

    Mark T. Gladwin

  2. Laboratory of Chemical Biology, National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA

    Mark T. Gladwin & Alan N. Schechter

  3. Department of Anesthesiology and the UAB Center for Free Radical Biology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, USA

    Jack R. Lancaster Jr. & Bruce A. Freeman

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Correspondence to Mark T. Gladwin.

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Gladwin, M., Lancaster, J., Freeman, B. et al. Nitric oxide's reactions with hemoglobin: a view through the SNO-storm. Nat Med 9, 496–500 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0503-496

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