Word.ws English Dictionary

hemes

hemes is the plural of heme.

Meaning of heme

Noun

heme (countable and uncountable, plural hemes)

  1. The component of hemoglobin (and other hemoproteins) responsible for binding oxygen. It consists of an iron ion that binds oxygen and a porphyrin ring that binds the globin molecules; one molecule binds one molecule of oxygen.
    • The binding of oxygen to the iron molecule causes the hemoglobin molecule to undergo conformational changes that affect the binding of oxygen to other heme sites.2008, John Greer, John Foerster, George Rodgers, Fixos Paraskevas, Bertil Glader, Daniel Arber, Robert Means Jr, Wintrobe's Clinical Hematology: Volume One: Twelfth Edition, page 141

Questions about hemes

What is hemes the plural of?
Hemes is the plural of heme.

Words near hemes in the dictionary

  1. hemerophyte
  2. hemerophytes
  3. hemeroside
  4. hemerythrin
  5. hemerythrins
  6. hemes
  7. Hemet
  8. hemi
  9. hemi-
  10. hemi-icosahedron
  11. hemi-inattention

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hemes (page history and authors); heme (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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