Biomolecules (Oct 2021)

Red Blood Cells’ Thermodynamic Behavior in Neurodegenerative Pathologies and Aging

  • Svetla Todinova,
  • Sashka Krumova,
  • Desislava Bogdanova,
  • Avgustina Danailova,
  • Elena Zlatareva,
  • Nikolay Kalaydzhiev,
  • Ariana Langari,
  • Ivan Milanov,
  • Stefka G. Taneva

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/biom11101500
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 10
p. 1500

Abstract

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The main trend of current research in neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs) is directed towards the discovery of novel biomarkers for disease diagnostics and progression. The pathological features of NDDs suggest that diagnostic markers can be found in peripheral fluids and cells. Herein, we investigated the thermodynamic behavior of the peripheral red blood cells (RBCs) derived from patients diagnosed with three common NDDs—Parkinson’s disease (PD), Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and compared it with that of healthy individuals, evaluating both fresh and aged RBCs. We established that NDDs can be differentiated from the normal healthy state on the basis of the variation in the thermodynamic parameters of the unfolding of major RBCs proteins—the cytoplasmic hemoglobin (Hb) and the membrane Band 3 (B3) protein. A common feature of NDDs is the higher thermal stability of both Hb and B3 proteins along the RBCs aging, while the calorimetric enthalpy can distinguish PD from ALS and AD. Our data provide insights into the RBCs thermodynamic behavior in two complex and tightly related phenomena—neurodegenerative pathologies and aging, and it suggests that the determined thermodynamic parameters are fingerprints of the altered conformation of Hb and B3 protein and modified RBCs’ aging in the studied NDDs.

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