Red blood cells (RBCs) are among the simplest, yet physiologically relevant biological specimens, due to their peculiarities, such as their lack of nucleus and simplified metabolism. Indeed, erythrocytes can be seen as biochemical machines, capable of performing a limited number of metabolic pathways. Along the aging path, the cells’ characteristics change as they accumulate oxidative and non-oxidative damages, and their structural and functional properties degrade.
In this work, we have studied RBCs and the activation of their ATP-producing metabolism using a real-time nanomotion sensor. This device allowed time-resolved analyses of the activation of this biochemical pathway, measuring the characteristics and the timing of the response at different points of their aging and the differences observed in favism erythrocytes in terms of the cellular reactivity and resilience to aging. Favism is a genetic defect of erythrocytes, which affects their ability to respond to oxidative stresses but that also determines differences in the metabolic and structural characteristic of the cells.
Our work shows that RBCs from favism patients exhibit a different response to the forced activation of the ATP synthesis compared to healthy cells. In particular, the favism cells, compared to healthy erythrocytes, show a greater resilience to the aging-related insults which was in good accord with the collected biochemical data on ATP consumption and reload.
This surprisingly higher endurance against cell aging can be addressed to a special mechanism of metabolic regulation that permits lower energy consumption in environmental stress conditions.