How many protein types contain iron (Fe)

[Lodgic]

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I kno there are thousands of types of proteins in the human body...but how many types contain iron...haemoglobin is one of these (more to say, a globin chain part of it has one)...

ALSO - how many types of protein are in the human body in approximate numbers?

[BlackJack]

1. I don't know on this one, but I can give you examples. Iron is often contained in heme groups - and haemoglobin has one. There are many proteins with heme groups, e.g. cytochrome c, as a heme is useful for moving electrons around. You also have giant iron storing proteins and small iron-transporting proteins, and they're very cool. There's another protein called aconitase which does something when it has iron, but goes off and summons more iron from the body when it loses the iron that was supposed to be there. These are the ones I've met.

These are the sites I've been to that give you a picture...
http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/static.do?p=...h/pdb89_1.html

http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/static.do?p=...h/pdb35_1.html

2. No one knows exactly how many. If you want all the different proteins that exists (without mutation AND without accounting for the highly adaptable immune system)... You have ~20,000 coding genes in the human genome, and many will have splice variants, mods.
So, tens of thousands is the ball-park figure.