Abstract
Erythrocyte ghost deformability was measured to study membrane deformability in the absence of the effect of internal viscosity. Human blood was washed with an isotonic Tris-buffered saline and white cells were removed. Ghosts were prepared by lysing red cells in 40 volumes of an ice-cold hypotonic buffer and washing the ghosts three times to yield white ghosts. 10% of volume of a hypertonic Tris-NaC1( 5mM Tris, 1.4M NaCl, pH 7.4) was added to the hypotonic ghost suspension and then incubated at 37°C for one hour to promote resealing.Ghost deformability was measured by laser diffractometry using high refractive arabinogalactan medium. The osmolarity of suspending medium had no effect on the maximum value of the deformability. There was no change in maximum deformability index of ghosts over the pH range of 5.0-9.0. Ghosts showed a progressive loss in deformability with increasing incubation temperature ( 45-50°C for 10 min ). Diamide (1-20 μM) decreased the ghost deformability and dithiotreitol (10mM ) recovered the reduced deformability to original level. These results suggest that the membrane deformability can be measured using ghosts by laser diffractometry. (J. Jpn. Soc. Biorheol., 2(1), 61~67, 1988).
