Myoglobin: A versatile age-old oxygen carrying hemoprotein and its emerging role in metabolite regulation in diverse tissues

Myoglobin (Mb) is an age-old heme containing cytoplasmic protein primarily expressed in heart and skeletal muscles, which is capable of rapid release of O 2 during the periods of hypoxia or anoxia. The canonical view of the primary physiological function of Mb is that it is a tissue oxygen (O 2 ) storage protein supporting mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation especially as the tissue O 2 partial pressure ( pO 2 ) drops and Mb increasingly offloads O 2 . For the past 50 years, many investigators are constantly exploring wide-range of physiological functions and metabolic regulation activities of Mb. Advanced genetic engineering tools and molecular techniques revealed important new insights and provided additional functions of Mb. However, accumulating evidence indicates that this paradigm is too narrow, especially in light of recent findings supporting plausible functions for Mb in lipid traffcking and sequestration, binding of small molecules such as lactate (LAC), pyruvate (PYR), glucose (GLU), polyamines, and glutathione (GSH), and “ectopic” expression in some types of cancer cells. Data from Mb knockout mice (Mb −/− ) and biochemical models suggest additional metabolic roles for Mb, especially regulation of nitric oxide (NO) pools and modulation of thermogenic brown adipose tissue (BAT) bioenergetics and lipid storage phenotypes. From these and other findings in the literature over many decades, it may be contemplated that the primary role for Mb under most conditions for Mb besides delivering O 2 in support of oxidative phosphorylation, but also serve as an O 2 -sensor that modulates intracellular O 2 - and NO-responsive molecular signaling pathways. This paradigm shift reflect a fundamental change in how oxidative metabolism and cell regulation are viewed in Mb-expressing cells such as skeletal muscle, heart, brown adipocytes, and select cancer cells. Herein, we present historic and emerging views related to the physiological roles for Mb, and working models illustrating the possible importance of interactions between Mb, gases, and small molecule metabolites in regulation of cell signaling and bioenergetics. USDA-ARS project 6026-51000-010-06S, Sturgis Foundation Grant AWD00054750 and ACRI-ABI Investigator Initiated Grant Award GR037175-4450S ABI. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.