My Research

Recently, my research interests have turned to the study of biomembranes, water permeability, liposome production, and the development of techniques that undergraduates can use to study aspects of these areas of research. For example, my research students and I have shown that the simple osmotic fragility assay can be used to demonstrate the presence of water channels in the plasma membrane of red blood cells, and I now use that as a lab experiment in my Cell Biology course. In addition, my students and I have used this same assay to determine basic kinetics parameters of osmotically-induced hemolysis in sheep and bovine red blood cells.

Liposomes promise to be an attractive model for the study of biomembranes. My students have been successful in encapsulating a physiological sodium phosphate-buffered solution in cell-size liposmes made of phosphatidylcholine. We are now attempting to encapsulate a solution of hemoglobin into similar liposomes in an attempt to employ the same osmotic fragility assay to study the kinetics of liposome lysis.