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Blood, Vol. 94 No. 1 (July 1), 1999:
pp. 319-325
By
From Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute, Oakland, CA;
Kinderklinik, Georg-August University Göttingen, Göttingen,
Germany; Centraal Klinisch Chemisch Laboratorium, Ziekenhuis Leyenburg,
Den Haag, the Netherlands; and Centre for Biomembranes and Lipid
Enzymology, University of Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Phosphatidylserine (PS) asymmetry was determined in red blood cells
from patients with hereditary spherocytosis and elliptocytosis. No
PS-exposing subpopulations were detected using the very sensitive method with fluorescently labeled annexin V. Treatment with
N-ethylmaleimide or adenosine triphosphate (ATP) depletion to
inactivate the flipase did not lead to formation of PS-exposing
subpopulations in these cells, but elevated intracellular calcium
levels did lead to extensive scrambling of the PS asymmetry. Although
interactions of the membrane skeleton with the phospholipid bilayer
have been suggested to stabilize the asymmetric distribution of PS
across the bilayer, our data show that red blood cells with a severely
damaged membrane skeleton are able to preserve asymmetry, even under
conditions in which restoration of the asymmetric distribution is
excluded. Moreover, the loss of membrane asymmetry in these cells
requires active scrambling involving high levels of intracellular
calcium as in normal cells. Our data show that the severe disorder of the membrane skeleton found in these cells does not affect the activity
of flipase or scramblase, indicating that these proteins are not
regulated by, nor coupled to the membrane skeleton assembly, and that
possible thrombotic events in spherocytosis patients are not likely
associated with altered PS topology of the red blood cells.
HEREDITARY SPHEROCYTOSIS (HS) and
hereditary elliptocytosis (HE) are heterogeneous disorders
characterized by alterations in the interactions between proteins of
the red blood cell (RBC) membrane skeleton, with reported molecular
defects in ankyrin, spectrin, band 3, band 4.1, or band
4.2.1-3 The resulting instability of the membrane skeleton
can be detected by altered morphology, osmotic fragility, or
deformability.4
In normal red blood cell membranes, phosphatidylserine (PS) is
exclusively located on the inner leaflet of the membrane (see Kuypers5 for review). This asymmetric distribution of PS is thought to be preserved by activity of the aminophospholipid
translocase, or flipase,6 and can be disrupted by action of
the scramblase,7 provided that the flipase activity is
inhibited. Interactions of the membrane skeleton with the phospholipid
bilayer have also been suggested to play a role in the stabilization of
the asymmetric distribution of PS across the bilayer.8,9 It
was reported that proteins such as spectrin and band 4.1 and 4.2 interact with PS,10-13 and it was logically assumed that
the abnormal interaction between skeleton and the membrane bilayer,
resulting from altered skeletal proteins, would affect phospholipid
distribution. The phospholipid asymmetry in red blood cells from HS and
hereditary pyropoikilocytosis patients with different levels of
spectrin deficiency was studied using phospholipase
degradation.14,15 No significant alterations were observed,
but the presence of small subpopulations with altered phospholipid
asymmetry would likely go undetected using this approach. Recently,
fluorescently labeled annexin V (AV) has been used to detect
subpopulations of red blood cells that expose PS in
vivo.16,17 Some anemias, such as sickle cell
disease17,18 and some forms of
thalassemia,19,20 are characterized by the presence of a
small but significant subpopulation of cells that expose PS. The
presence of PS-exposing cells in these hemoglobinopathies is thought to
result in an imbalanced hemostasis and to increase a risk for
stroke.5 Whereas a thrombotic risk is usually not
associated with HS or HE, cases of both arterial and venous
thrombosis have been described.21
Interestingly, the Mg-adenosine triphosphatase (ATPase) activity,
related to the flipase activity, was shown to be increased in HS red
blood cell membranes, suggesting that the increased movement of PS from
outer to inner monolayer compensates for the decreased interaction of
PS with the membrane skeleton.22 We hypothesized that we
would be able to identify (small) subpopulations of red blood cells
that expose PS in the blood of HS and HE patients using fluorescently
labeled AV, and that inhibition of the flipase would increase the size
of this subpopulation. The decreased interaction with the skeleton
could lead to an increased movement of PS to the outer monolayer, which
would not be compensated by a deactivated flipase activity.
In this study, we inhibited the flipase in HS and HE red blood cells by
rapid adenosine triphosphate (ATP) depletion or
N-Ethylmaleimide (NEM) treatment, both well established
procedures to inhibit Mg-ATPase-driven movement of PS from outer to
inner monolayer. Fluorescently labeled AV in combination with flow
cytometry was used to probe for the presence of PS-exposing cells, and
treatment with calcium and ionophore was used as a control to scramble
the glycerophospholipids across the membrane. We report that HS or HE
erythrocytes do not lose PS asymmetry, even after overnight storage
after the inhibition of the flipase, whereas increase in cytosolic
calcium efficiently scrambles the PS asymmetry in these cells as in
normal red blood cells.
Erythrocytes
Flipase Activity and Inhibition
Scrambling of Membrane Phospholipid Organization Membrane glycerophospholipid organization was disrupted by the use of calcium and ionophore as described before.17 RBCs at a 16% hematocrit were equilibrated in HBSS with 1 mmol/L calcium for 3 minutes at 37°C. Subsequently, calcium ionophore A23187 was added to the RBC suspension to a final concentration of 4 µmol/L. The suspension was incubated for 1 hour at 37°C, washed with 5 mmol/L EDTA, washed with buffer containing 1% bovine serum albumin (BSA) to remove ionophore, and finally resuspended in buffer.Annexin V Labeling and Flow Cytometric Analysis The treated cells were labeled with AV essentially as described before,17 either directly after the incubations or after overnight storage at room temperature. Fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) conjugated human recombinant AV (FITC-AV) or green fluorescent protein AV (GFP-AV; a kind gift from Joel Ernst, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, CA26) were used alternatively with similar results. Briefly, cells were resuspended at 0.05% hematocrit in HBSS containing 2 mmol/L CaCl2 and AV (75 to 150 ng/mL). After 30 minutes incubation at room temperature, the cells were pelleted at 10,000g for 10 seconds, and the supernatant was removed. The cells were then resuspended to approximately 106 cells/250 µL of HBSS containing 2 mmol/L CaCl2. Flow cytometry was carried out exactly as described earlier.24 The percentage of AV-positive cells was determined from the fluorescence signal in excess of that obtained with a negative (unlabeled) control for each sample.
Characterization of Red Blood Cells by Ektacytometry All samples tested for phospholipid asymmetry were analyzed by ektacytometry. The osmotic deformability curves of all patients showed patterns typical for HS or HE (Fig 1).
PS Exposure In Vivo To determine the number of cells in the circulation that expose PS, we used fluorescently labeled AV. GFP-AV has been shown to bind similarly to apoptotic cells as FITC-labeled human recombinant AV.26 Both probes were used in our experiments to label red blood cells that expose PS, with identical results.
Inhibition of the Flipase
NEM treatment.
Normal RBCs treated with 10 mmol/L NEM for 30 minutes showed a slight
increase in the subpopulation that exposed PS from 0.3% to 0.8%
(Table 2), indicating no significant
increase as compared with normal levels (Table 1). The slight decrease
after overnight (±20 hours) incubation of these cells coincided with
a low level of hemolysis, suggesting that some of these PS-exposing
cells had lysed during the incubation. The flipase activity in the NEM pretreated cells, as measured by the movement of spin-labeled PS from
outer to inner monolayer, was inhibited as reported
before24 (not shown). Taken together, these data indicate
that NEM treatment and resulting deactivation of the flipase do not
lead to the exposure of PS in a subpopulation of normal red blood
cells.
Rapid ATP depletion.
Because NEM treatment, although effective in the inhibition of the
flipase, can also lead to other effects as the result of its reaction
with protein thiol groups, we inhibited flipase activity by rapidly
decreasing ATP levels in a buffer containing 6 mmol/L iodoacetamide and
5 mmol/L tetrathionate.25 The ATP levels at the start of
the experiments were 3.4 ± 0.6 µmol/g hemoglobin for normal cells
and 3.9 ± 0.7 µmol/g hemoglobin for HS and HE cells and were not
significantly different. Less than 2% of the original ATP level was
found in the normal control cells after 2 hours ATP depletion, and less
than 1% was found in the treated HS or HE cells. The flipase activity
was severely inhibited as expected and reported before (Seigneuret and
Devaux,6 not shown).
Scrambling In Vitro
In the early 1980s, the membrane skeleton was suggested to be of major
importance in sustaining the distribution of the main phospholipids
across the red blood cell membrane,9 and many publications
followed, addressing the interaction between PS and components of the
membrane skeleton.10-13 After discovery of the ATP-consuming flipase,6 the role of skeleton became
redefined as an "energy preserving" system.8 Studies
implied that membrane asymmetry would be lost on disconnection of the
bilayer from the underlying skeleton and that the flipase was the
assigned "repair" mechanism for these occasions. Recently, a
publication by Vermeulen et al22 confirmed this concept by
showing an increased Mg-ATPase activity in HS red blood cell membranes,
suggesting that the increased outward translocation (flop) of PS,
expected to result from the disorder in the membrane skeleton, would be
compensated by an increase in flipase activity.
The authors thank Dr Joel Ernst for the kind supply of GFP-AV and Dr
Frank Shafer for supply of a number of HE samples.
Submitted January 8, 1999; accepted March 9, 1999.
Supported by grants no. HL55213, DK32094, HL20985, and M01RR01271 from
the National Institutes of Health.
The publication costs of this
article were defrayed in part by
page charge payment. This article
must therefore be hereby marked
"advertisement"
in accordance with 18 U.S.C. section
1734 solely to indicate this fact.
Address reprint requests to Frans A. Kuypers, PhD, Children's Hospital
Oakland Research Institute, 747 52nd St, Oakland, CA 94609.
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