JMS/sandboxBarkai

It comes down to . Without these amino acids, myoglobin in both whale and elephants has a charge of +1. With them, whale myoglobin has net charge of +4, which is significantly higher than elephants' +2. Importantly, all eight of these divergent amino acids are .

These eight can be visualized: (summing up the total charge of the protein) (glu in elephents versus gln in whales), (lys vs. his), (thr vs. asp), (thr vs. lys ), (gln vs. lys ), (gln vs. his), (lys vs. asn), (asn vs. lys ).