Why aren’t all animal proteins the same color? Ex-Why aren’t chicken, pork and beef all red? What determines a proteins color?
In: Biology
You mean meat, not protein.
And meat is not only made out of protein, its many cells with all kinds of stuff. Red meat has its color from myoglobin a protein that transports oxygen.
White meat does have less or none of that.
It’s because they are built differently. Different species will construct their muscles differently with different proteins, different structures different chemicals etc.
Within an animal, different muscles look different.
Take a chicken. The breast muscles are structural, so have very little myoglobin and are white. The legs, thighs and wings are working muscles for movement, use much more energy, so need more oxygen and therefore have more myoglobin, thus are darker in colour.
Fun fact, almost all colors in the human body are the result of one of two families of molecules: melanin and heme. Melanin is what makes skin tan and produces eye and hair color. Heme is what makes blood and muscles red, and its breakdown products produce the green, yellow, and brown colors of bile, urine, and poop (biliverdin & bilirubin, urobilin, and stercobilin respectively).
The molecules themselves produce color by being able to absorb certain kinds of light. Heme absorbs blue light, leaving only red. Melanin absorbs most colors of light, making it look dark or brown. Different tissues have different amounts of these molecules, which makes them have different colors.
Question is why is red meat bad for us?
probably because the part that gives the color developed a long long time ago, before different species even became different species. kinda the reason for any shared trait between species (except convergent evolution I guess)
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