Cholesterol depletion facilitates recovery from hypotonic cell swelling in CHO cells

The maintenance of cell volume homeostasis is critical for preventing pathological cell swelling that may lead to severe cellular dysfunction or cell death. Our earlier studies have shown that volume-regulated anion channels that play a major role in the regulation of cell volume are facilitated by a decrease in cellular cholesterol suggesting that cholesterol depletion should also facilitate regulatory volume decrease (RVD), the ability of cells to recover from hypotonic swelling. In this study, we test this hypothesis using a novel methodology developed to measure changes in cell volume using a microfluidics chamber. Our data show that cholesterol depletion of Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) significantly facilitates the recovery process, as is apparent from a faster onset of the RVD (162±10 s. vs. 114±5 s. in control and cholesterol depleted cells respectively) and a higher degree of volume recovery after 10 min of the hypotonic challenge (41%±6% vs. 65%±6% in control and cholesterol depleted cells respectively). In contrast, enriching cells with cholesterol had no effect on the RVD process. We also show here that similarly to our previous observations in endothelial cells, cholesterol depletion significantly increases the stiffness of CHO cells suggesting that facilitation of RVD may be associated with cell stiffening. Furthermore, we also show that increasing cell stiffness by stabilizing F-actin with jasplakinolide also facilitates RVD development. We propose that cell stiffening enhances cell mechano-sensitivity, which in turn facilitates the RVD process.