Interplay Between Plasma Membrane Lipid Alteration, Oxidative Stress and Calcium-Based Mechanism for Extracellular Vesicle Biogenesis From Erythrocytes During Blood Storage

Anne-Sophie Cloos; Marine Ghodsi; Amaury Stommen; Juliette Vanderroost; Nicolas Dauguet; Hélène Pollet; Ludovic D'Auria; Eric Mignolet; Yvan Larondelle; Romano Terrasi; Giulio G Muccioli; Patrick Van Der Smissen; Donatienne Tyteca

doi:10.3389/fphys.2020.00712

Interplay Between Plasma Membrane Lipid Alteration, Oxidative Stress and Calcium-Based Mechanism for Extracellular Vesicle Biogenesis From Erythrocytes During Blood Storage

Front Physiol. 2020 Jul 3:11:712. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2020.00712. eCollection 2020.

Affiliations

¹ CELL Unit and PICT Platform, de Duve Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium.
² GECE Unit and CYTF Platform, de Duve Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium.
³ NCHM Unit, Institute of Neuroscience, Université catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium.
⁴ Louvain Institute of Biomolecular Science and Technology, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
⁵ Bioanalysis and Pharmacology of Bioactive Lipids Research Group, Louvain Drug Research Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium.

Abstract

The shedding of extracellular vesicles (EVs) from the red blood cell (RBC) surface is observed during senescence in vivo and RBC storage in vitro. Two main models for EV shedding, respectively based on calcium rise and oxidative stress, have been proposed in the literature but the role of the plasma membrane lipid composition and properties is not understood. Using blood in K⁺/EDTA tubes stored for up to 4 weeks at 4°C as a relevant RBC vesiculation model, we showed here that the RBC plasma membrane lipid composition, organization in domains and biophysical properties were progressively modified during storage and contributed to the RBC vesiculation. First, the membrane content in cholesterol and linoleic acid decreased whereas lipid peroxidation and spectrin:membrane occupancy increased, all compatible with higher membrane rigidity. Second, phosphatidylserine surface exposure showed a first rapid rise due to membrane cholesterol decrease, followed by a second calcium-dependent increase. Third, lipid domains mainly enriched in GM1 or sphingomyelin strongly increased from the 1st week while those mainly enriched in cholesterol or ceramide decreased during the 1st and 4th week, respectively. Fourth, the plasmatic acid sphingomyelinase activity considerably increased upon storage following the sphingomyelin-enriched domain rise and potentially inducing the loss of ceramide-enriched domains. Fifth, in support of the shedding of cholesterol- and ceramide-enriched domains from the RBC surface, the number of cholesterol-enriched domains lost and the abundance of EVs released during the 1st week perfectly matched. Moreover, RBC-derived EVs were enriched in ceramide at the 4th week but depleted in sphingomyelin. Then, using K⁺/EDTA tubes supplemented with glucose to longer preserve the ATP content, we better defined the sequence of events. Altogether, we showed that EV shedding from lipid domains only represents part of the global vesiculation mechanistics, for which we propose four successive events (cholesterol domain decrease, oxidative stress, sphingomyelin/sphingomyelinase/ceramide/calcium alteration and phosphatidylserine exposure).

Keywords: cell vesiculation; ceramide; cholesterol; lipid domains; lipidomics; membrane transversal asymmetry; plasmatic acid sphingomyelinase; reactive oxygen species.