Red Blood Cells Cytoskeleton - Article Example

Your full November 18, Red Blood Cells Cytoskeleton Red blood cells have a specific biconcavedisc shape. This characteristic enables them to optimize their ability of gas exchange. They have a 120 day life span, and throughout this course, the red blood cells experience high intensity sheer force while moving through narrow capillaries in the microvasculature. This results in fast but reversible deformations in their structure. Thus, there is special cytoskeleton that the red blood cells are equipped with, which helps them to combat this sheer force by providing them enough mechanical firmness and elasticity.

The membrane of a red blood cell is a lipid bilayer with transmembrane proteins and a myriad of filamentous proteins along the whole membrane. In the membrane cytoskeleton, spectrin is the most commonly found protein, forming long and elastic heterodimers, that join head to head to form heterotetramers, the tails of which are composed of F-actin, protein 4.1, and actin-binding proteins called dematin, adducin, tropomyosin, and tropomodulin (Stokes). This whole meshwork of proteins is attached to the cytoskeleton at two places: “one mediated by ankyrin that couples spectrin to Band 3 and the other mediated by protein 4.

1 that couples the junctional complex to Glycophorin C” (Stokes, para.2). So, we see that human red blood cells are deficient in actin–myosin–microtubule cytoskeleton, which is helpful in cell shape determination, according to a recent research (Acton 69). The proteins of the cytoskeleton plasma membrane interact to form a barrier for toxins, but help the ions and information signals to pass in and out of the cell membrane. Works CitedActon, Q. Ashton (Ed). Cellular Structures: Advances in Research and Application: 2011 Edition.

Atlanta, Georgia: ScholarlyEditions, 2012. Stokes, David. “Architecture of the Cytoskeleton in Red Blood Cells.” Laboratory of David Stokes. NYU School of Medicine, 2011. Web. 18 Nov 2012. .