Bohr effect
Efecto Bohr
- Date
- 1904 · confidence high
- Place
- University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
- Credited to
- Christian Bohr, with Karl Hasselbalch and August Krogh
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Bohr and his team showed that haemoglobin's oxygen dissociation curve is sigmoidal rather than hyperbolic, and that a high partial pressure of CO2 shifts it to the right, lowering oxygen affinity: blood thus releases more oxygen in tissues with higher metabolic activity.
Russian physiologist Bronislav Verigo had noted a similar relationship between CO2 and oxygen affinity in 1892, but with a model Bohr considered flawed; hence the Russian literature speaks of the 'Verigo–Bohr effect', though internationally it is known simply as the 'Bohr effect'.
What it led to
- The modern understanding of oxygen transport and exchange in blood
- A basis for the (reciprocal) Haldane effect on CO2