Improved stop-flow apparatus to measure permeability of human red cells and ghosts

An improved stop-flow apparatus has been designed and constructed to measure the permeability characteristics of human red cells, which can be inferred from the time course of red cell volume changes following a sudden change in cellular environment produced by a raped mixing device. The improved apparatus is directly coupled to a computer which automates the subtraction and averaging procedures that have been developed to minimize the noise generated in the system by the cessation of red cell forward motion when the flow is suddenly stopped. Real time data acquisition also makes it possible to increase the number of data points by an order of magnitude, thus improving accuracy significantly. The apparatus has been tested by measurements of the human red cell hydraulic permeability coefficient. Data are presented to validate the subtraction procedure. Experiments have also been carried out on red cell ghosts which indicate that the hydraulic conductivity of the ghost is similar to that of the undisturbed red cell.