Electrorotation — a new method for investigating membrane events during thrombocyte activation. Influence of drugs and osmotic pressure

Abstract The measurement of the spin of cells in rotating high-frequency electric fields (‘electrorotation’) makes possible the investigation of dielectric membrane properties of single cells. This method was applied to membrane permeability changes accompanying thrombocyte activation and compared with light-scattering data. Describing the dielectric behavior of platelets by a single-shell model and assuming a sufficiently low membrane conductivity of 1 · 10 −7 S/m we found for nonactivated platelets a membrane capacity of 5.5 mF/m 2 and the conductivity of the internal medium was estimated to be 0.12 S/m. Upon activation, the electrorotation decreased continuously, with half-times in the range of few minutes. This could be explained assuming a 500-fold increase in membrane conductivity. The application of both local anesthetics and virostatics inhibited the decrease of electrorotation, as did hypertonic osmotic pressure. In all cases this was accompanied by inhibition of platelet aggregation. Hypotonic solutions induced self-aggregation and spontaneous loss of electrorotation. It was concluded that the increase in permeability of the granule membrane is a crucial step in the release reaction and that the electrorotation method is able to detect the incorporation of the granule membranes into the plasma membrane during activation. The adbantage of this electrorotation method is that it enables measurements on a single-cell level, thus avoiding interactions between platelets.