THE ELECTRIC IMPEDANCE OF HEMOLYZED SUSPENSIONS OF MAMMALIAN ERYTHROCYTES

This paper is concerned with the changes in the electric surface capacity and surface resistivity of the membrane surrounding the mammalian red corpuscle, as a result of various types of hemolysis. In the case of hemolysis with water, the cells swell with no apparent change in the electric properties of the membrane. They then hemolyze, but the membrane persists, although showing evidence of injury, as indicated by a change in the frequency dependence of its capacity and resistivity at low frequencies. The fact that a change of the frequency dependence takes place shows that the injury cannot be due merely to a rupture in the membrane, but must be due to changes in the properties (increased permeability) of the membrane as a whole. With chemical lysins (saponin, complement and amboceptor, digitonin, sodium taurocholate) a similar type of injury to the membranes of a certain number of the corpuscles takes place, to an increasing extent as the concentration of lysin is increased. The rest of the corpuscles become completely permeable to the electric current, and as the amount of lysin is increased, this number of completely permeable corpuscles increases until all are affected. This change, presumably associated with a disintegration of the corpuscle membrane, is referred to as stromatolysis, and the method gives a quantitative means of determining percentage stromatolysis. For lysis by freezing and thawing, the results obtained indicate this type of lysis to be different from that of the others studied.