54 II. FUNDAMENTAL STRUCTURE OF PROTOPLASM 



2. Spread of Denaturation in Red Blood Cells 



There are numerous evidences that various physicochemical changes 

 can spread readily in the protoplasm. Almost all the life phenomena 

 may presumably depend upon the transmission of the changes, which 

 cannot be accomplished unless lipids are interposed among protein 

 molecules rendering the protoplasm protein freely movable. On this 

 account lipids may be regarded as an essential component of the 

 protoplasm. 



In this section some detailed discussion will be made on the 

 haemolysis, which can be looked upon as one of the phenomena 

 resulting from such a transmission of protoplasm change, in the hope 

 that it may throw some light on the mechanism of the transmission. 



Red blood cells consist of haemoglobin and stroma, which the latter 

 is a substance sedimentable from water solution of lysed cells by pass- 

 ing CO2 into the solution. According to our study, stroma separated 

 from haemoglobin is a particulate substance similar to viruses consist- 

 ing of a protein and lipids (20). When acetic acid is added instead of 

 CO2 to the lysed solution to adjust its pH to about 5.5, it can be sedi- 

 mented like virus particles and isolated by an ordinary centrifuge. 

 This shows that the stroma thus obtained is nothing but the coagu- 

 lated elementary bodies of the blood cells. Red cells seem, therefore, 

 to be composed of such elementary bodies to which a great quantity of 

 haemoglobin is adsorbed. Mitchson (21) has claimed that the thickness 

 of the membrane of the human red cell is 0.5//, and that since this 

 would occupy about 55 per cent of the volume of an intact cell, a red 

 cell is largely made up of such a thick membrane containing haemo- 

 globin. This thick "membrane" may be the stroma, which is the pro- 

 toplasm itself, and which can be decomposed into virus like particles, 

 i. e., into coagulated elementary bodies. 



When a physicochemical change is induced in this stroma to a 

 certain degree, the stroma may become unable to maintain the adsorbed 

 haemoglobin and thus haemolysis may follow. If so, the changing de-' 

 gree of stroma will be traced in detail by the liberated haemoglobin 

 amount. 



If the protoplasm structure is just as already described, haemolysis 

 may take place in the following way : When a haemolytic agent com- 

 bines with a red cell to exert an influence upon the protoplasm, a 

 change will occur in the site of the combination of the agent and will 

 spread successively in the protoplasm ; when the change reaches to a 

 certain degree haemoglobin will begin to escape from the protoplasm. 

 In fact, experimental results obtained with haemolytic agents, such as 



