Evidence that asymmetry of the membrane/cytoskeletal complex in human red blood cell ghosts is responsible for their biconcave shape
Open accessAbstract
Significance: The compositional basis for the biconcave shape of the human red blood cell is unknown. The present work used red blood cell ghosts, which retain the ability to become biconcave discs, which were centrifuged as spheres onto coated coverslips. It was found that during their centrifugation, they became oriented with a dense band located in an equatorial plane of the sphered ghost. When the ghosts were transformed into biconcave discs, they collapsed in place with the dense band in the rim. These shape changes were recorded microscopically. These results indicate that the biconcave shape depends on differences in the density between their rim and the dimple regions and specify that the underlying cytoskeletal complex is asymmetrically distributed.
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Ghost cell formation was originally described as a degenerative process in red blood cells that lost hemoglobin and later adapted as a specialized preparation to visualize membrane architecture.
“Similarly, ghost cell formation was originally described as a degenerative process in red blood cells (RBCs) that have lost hemoglobin and later adapted as a specialized preparation to visualize membrane architecture28,29.”
From Ghost Neuron preparation unlocks high-resolution structural mapping of intracellular architecture in axons (2026) · cites this paper as [28]
Materials and Methods (page unavailable) describes prepared red blood cell ghosts containing less than 2% hemoglobin. The Significance section and the discussion (pages unavailable) use those ghosts to study and image the membrane/cytoskeletal basis of red blood cell shape. The paper does not say ghost formation was originally described as a degenerative process or trace a later adaptation from that description. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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- [12]Smith AS, et al. (October 19, 2017) Myosin IIA interacts with the spectrin-actin membrane skeleton to control red blood cell membrane curvature and deformability. bioRxiv , 10.1101/202556. · DOI
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Bodakuntla, S., Marelli, J., Vasquez-Montes, V., Glauser, S., Biertümpfel, C., & Mizuno, N. (2026) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-026-77741-4
- Authors
- Hoffman, J. F.
- Affiliations
- Yale University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Hoffman, Joseph F.
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2018-01-30
- Volume
- 115
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 1641-1645
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC5816212
- OpenAlex
- W2793082720
- Cited by
- 9
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 2
- FWCI
- 0.83
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Erythrocyte Function and Pathophysiology
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Lipid Membrane Structure and Behavior
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine › Blood properties and coagulation
- Keywords
- erythrocyte ghosts, tonicity, erythrocyte shape change
- MeSH terms
- Centrifugation, Cytoskeleton, Erythrocyte Deformability, Erythrocyte Membrane, Erythrocytes, Humans, Cell Shape
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