Red blood cell oxygen has been released the resulting deoxyhemoglobin is of a dark red burgundy color. However, blood can appear bluish when seen through the vessel wall and skin. Pulse oximetry takes advantage of the hemoglobin color change to directly measure the arterial blood oxygen saturation using colorimetric techniques. Hemoglobin also has a very high affinity for carbon monoxide, forming carboxyhemoglobin which is a very bright red in color. Flushed, confused patients with a saturation reading of 100% on pulse oximetry are sometimes found to be suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning. Having oxygen-carrying proteins inside specialized cells (as opposed to oxygen carriers
Hemoglobin such as pure water, alcohol or ether, followed by slow evaporation of the solvent from the resulting protein solution. Hemoglobin's reversible oxygenation was described a few years later by Felix Hoppe-Seyler. In 1959, Max Perutz determined the molecular structure of hemoglobin by X-ray crystallography. This work resulted in his sharing with John Kendrew the 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their studies of the structures of globular proteins. The role of hemoglobin in the blood was elucidated by French physiologist Claude Bernard. The name "hemoglobin" is derived from the words "heme" and "globin", reflecting the fact that each subunit of