Fold Commons

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Hemoglobin (beta)

This piece pairs with alpha to make full hemoglobin. One tiny change in the beta gene, passed down from both parents, causes sickle cell disease.

Hemoglobin (beta): its AlphaFold model, drawn in one colour
Picture, in one colour: AlphaFold DB model v6 for UniProt P68871, from Fold Commons' snapshot of 2026-10-22. A prediction, not an experiment.

See it in 3D

Fun fact

Sickle cell came from a swap of just one amino acid out of about 146.

Words to know

NGSS alignment

Structure

Rendered in FoldLens Junior from AlphaFold Database entry P68871. See the underlying prediction at alphafold.ebi.ac.uk/entry/P68871.

For teachers and platforms

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