Transepithelial capacitance decrease reveals closure of lateral interspace in A6 epithelia

A sine wave method was used to measure transepithelial capacitance (CT) at 4.1 kHz (CHFT ). Model calculations show that CHFT reflects the equivalent capacitance of the series arrangement of apical and basolateral membrane capacitance. Cell swelling induced by reducing the basolateral osmolality from 260 to 140 mosmol/kg H2O (NaCl or sucrose removal) transiently decreased CHFT. The decrease in CHFT (DeltaCHFT ) reached its maximum 30 s after the onset of cell swelling and a complete recovery of CHFT was attained within 3-4 min. DeltaCHFT could be diminished by manoeuvres that reduced the rate or amplitude of cell swelling, i.e. lowering the temperature or treatment with low concentrations of glutaraldehyde (0.025%). DeltaCHFT increased with the magnitude of the osmotic perturbation but saturated at large volume expansions. DeltaCHFT increased with culture time. Electron micrographs showed a clear correlation between time course of CHFT changes and the closure of the lateral interspace (LIS). A striking correlation between the occurrence of CHFT recovery and the ability of the cells to develop a regulatory volume decrease (RVD) was found: Gd3+ (0.5 mM) inhibited both phenomena. The frequency dependence of CT was obtained from impedance spectra recorded over the range of 4 Hz to 22 kHz. These data agree with model calculations in which the contribution of the access resistance to the lateral membrane was included. All observations are consistent with the idea that DeltaCHFT originates from the closure of the LIS during cell swelling. The latter phenomenon increases the access resistance to the lateral membrane, which results in a marked reduction of the basolateral membrane area detected at high frequencies with capacitance measurements.