Abstract
The elasticity of red cell membrane is a critical physiological index for the activity of RBC. Study of the inherent mechanism for RBCs membrane elasticity transformation is attention-getting all along. This paper proposes an optimized measurement method of erythrocytes membrane shear modulus incorporating acousto-optic deflector (AOD) scanning optical tweezers system. By use of this method, both membrane shear moduli and sizes of RBCs with different in vitro times were determined. The experimental results reveal that the RBCs membrane elasticity and size decline with in vitro time extension. In addition, semi quantitative measurements of S-nitrosothiol content in blood using fluorescent spectrometry during in vitro storage show that RBCs membrane elasticity change is positively associated with the S-nitrosylation level of blood. The analysis considered that the diminished activity of the nitric oxide synthase makes the S-nitrosylation of in vitro blood weaker gradually. The main reason for worse elasticity of the in vitro RBCs is that S-nitrosylation effect of spectrin fades. These results will provide a guideline for further study of in vitro cells activity and other clinical applications.
Highlights
Red blood cells (RBCs) are responsible for delivering oxygen to tissues and organs mainly
We measure the stretching of fresher RBCs in vitro
The shear moduli of RBCs were calculated by putting the slope k substitute into the following expression [31]: H=
Summary
Red blood cells (RBCs) are responsible for delivering oxygen to tissues and organs mainly. The early measurement technologies include micropipette aspiration [4], ektacytometry [5], viscometry [6], micropore filtration [7] and etc. These methods are greatly developed and widely applied. Optical tweezers have many advantages in biomechanics research, such as single cell level operation, high accuracy and little damage to biological tissue. Since Sylvie Hénon et al measured the shear modulus of single RBC membrane successfully with double optical tweezers [9], plenty of researchers have shifted their sights to study deformability of RBCs with optical tweezers. The recent main research contents include the following several aspects: (1) The influences of sickle cell disease, malaria, diabetes and other blood diseases on RBCs deformation and drug treatment of pathological RBCs [10,11,12,13]; (2) The transformation of RBCs deformation under different physiological environments [14, 15]; (3) The analysis of RBCs deformation by combining optical tweezers with the finite element simulation [16,17,18]
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