Membrane Remodelling and Vesicle Formation During Ageing of Human Red Blood Cells

What is it about?

It's about the aging of human erythrocytes, why they get smaller as they lose surface area and volume while maintaining the biconcave disc shape. They could lose vesicle in the circulation as they do in vitro when challenged with various stimuli. In vitro they usually lose spectrin-free vesicles. We found, however, that older human red blood cells have lost spectrin, which they should not have if they released spectrin-free vesciles as their normal ageing process. This is a novel discovery: nobody ever attepted to quantify spectrin in red blood cells of different age. A certain amount of spectrin is very likely lost together with part of the lipid bilayer in a coordinated manner, but not through the release of spectrin-free micro- or nano vesicles. It is terefore proposed that the loss od portions of the membrane that takes place during ageing of human red blood cells occurs through a mechanical action in the sinusoids of the spleen, where most active is the processing of red cells for removing damaged portions of the membrane and abnormal cells.

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