Erythrocyte deformability depends on membrane tubulin variability

NIGRA A; CASALE C H; SANTANDER VS; MONESTEROLO N E; CAMPETELLI AN

Córdoba

Congreso; II Brazil-Argentine Microfluidic Congress; 2019

In the past years erythrocytes has emerged as the main determinants of blood rheology. The red blood cell cytoskeleton allows high deformability and stability, which enables them to move through microvessels of the microcirculatory system. In previous work, our group showed for the first time the presence of tubulin in erythrocytes. In these anucleated cells, tubulin distributes in three operationally different subcellular spaces: the plasma membrane, the cytosol and a sedimentable fraction that resembles spectrin cytoskeleton. This special distribution is altered in erythrocytes from hypertensive and diabetic patients, where membrane tubulin is particularly increased, while sedimentable tubulin is decreased. Curiously, a high decrease in erythrocyte deformability is observed in these pathologies. On the basis of these results, the objective of this work was to determine the relationship between erythrocytes membrane tubulin and deformability. For this purpose, healthy, diabetic and hypertensive erythrocytes were pharmacologically treated with drugs that affect membrane tubulin and the deformability was monitored by following the pressure that needs to be applied to an erythrocyte solution to flow through a 5 m pore polycarbonate membrane. Our results reveal a direct correlation between the plasma membrane tubulin level and the erythrocytes deformability. In conclusion, our results confirm that changes in the level of tubulin at the plasma membrane modify erythrocyte deformability, leading to the characteristic hemodynamic dysfunction observed in arterial hypertension and diabetes.