Journal article
Multimodal imaging reveals membrane skeleton reorganisation during reticulocyte maturation and differences in dimple and rim regions of mature erythrocytes
AJ Blanch, J Nunez-Iglesias, A Namvar, S Menant, O Looker, V Rajagopal, WH Tham, L Tilley, MWA Dixon
Journal of Structural Biology X | ELSEVIER | Published : 2022
Open access
Abstract
The red blood cell (RBC) is remarkable in its ability to deform as it passages through the vasculature. Its deformability derives from a spectrin-actin protein network that supports the cell membrane and provides strength and flexibility, however questions remain regarding the assembly and maintenance of the skeletal network. Using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) we have examined the nanoscale architecture of the cytoplasmic side of membrane discs prepared from reticulocytes and mature RBCs. Immunofluorescence microscopy was used to probe the distribution of spectrin and other membrane skeleton proteins. We found that the cell surface area decreases by up..
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Grants
Awarded by University of Melbourne
Funding Acknowledgements
The authors thank the Australian Red Cross Blood Service and the BDMI Cord Blood Bank. Fluorescence microscopy was performed at the Biological Optical Microscopy Platform and electron microscopy was carried out at the Ian Holmes Imaging Centre at Bio21, the University of Melbourne ( www.microscopy.unimelb.edu.au) . AFM was performed at the Materials Characterisation and Fabrication Platform (MCFP) , The University of Melbourne. We would like to thank Sebastien Menant, Li-Jin Chan and Sravya Keremane for their support in reticulocyte purifi-cation. LT is a Georgina Sweet, Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow (FL150100106) (http:// www.arc.gov.au) . W.-H.T. is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute-Wellcome Trust International Research Scholar (208693/Z/17/Z) and supported by National Health and Med-ical Research Council of Australia (GNT1143187, GNT1160042, GNT1160042, GNT1154937) . MWAD and LT thank the National Health and Medical Research Council (GNT1098992) (https:// www.nhmrc. gov.au) for funding support. AB received support from a UoM ECR Grant.