Erythrocyt deformability depends on membrane tubulin variability

AYELÉN D NIGRA; MONESTEROLO NE; SANTANDER V.S.; CAMPETELLI AN

Córdoba

Congreso; II Brazil - Argentine Microfluidics Congress / V Congreso en Microfluidica Argentina; 2019

In the past years erythrocytes has emerged as the main determinants of bloodrheology. 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 inerythrocytes. In these anucleated cells, tubulin distributes in three erationally different subcellular spaces: the plasma membrane, the cytosol and a sedimentable fraction that resembles spectrin cytoskeleton. This special distribution is ltered 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 pharmacologicallytreated 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 μm pore polycarbonate membrane. Our results reveal a direct correlation between the plasma membrane tubulin level and the rythrocytes 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 dysfuntion observed in arterial hypertension and diabetes.