These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.


Pubmed for Handhelds

PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS

Search MEDLINE/PubMed

  • Title: Human erythrocyte spectrin dimer intrinsic viscosity: temperature dependence and implications for the molecular basis of the erythrocyte membrane free energy.
    Author: Stokke BT, Mikkelsen A, Elgsaeter A.
    Journal: Biochim Biophys Acta; 1985 Jun 11; 816(1):102-10. PubMed ID: 4005229.
    Abstract:
    We have determined experimentally the temperature dependence of human erythrocyte spectrin dimer intrinsic viscosity at shear rates 8-12 s-1 using a Cartesian diver viscometer. We find that the intrinsic viscosity decreases from 43 +/- 3 ml/g at 4 degrees C to 34 +/- 3 ml/g when the temperature is increased to 38 degrees C. Our results show that spectrin dimers are flexible worm-like macromolecules with persistence length about 20 nm and that the mean square end-to-end distance for this worm-like macromolecules decreases when the temperature is increased. This implies that the spectrin dimer internal energy decreases when the end-to-end distance is increased and that the free energy increase associated with making the end-to-end distance longer than the equilibrium value for the free molecules is of entropic origin. The temperature dependence of the erythrocyte membrane shear modulus reported previously in the literature therefore appears mainly to be due to temperature dependent alterations in the membrane skeleton topology.
    [Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]