Potassium transport in human erythrocytes: evidence for a three compartment system.

Whole human blood is incubated for periods of (1/2) to 3 hours with K(42) at 37 degrees C. At the close of this period, called pre-incubation, the plasma is removed from the cells and the cells, now become radioactive, are again incubated in a mixture of plasma and buffer for periods of up to 10 additional hours. The time course of the K(42) activity of the incubating medium is followed. Characteristically, after 2 hours of pre-incubation, the activity in the medium rises to a peak about 1 and (1/2) hours after resuspension, and then falls slowly until at 10 hours it is very close to its initial value at the beginning of the resuspension interval. This transient rise in K(42) activity in the medium is taken to indicate that the red cell does not consist of a single uniform K compartment, but contains at least two compartments. Thus one cellular compartment contains a reservoir of high specific activity K which provides the specific activity gradient necessary to drive the K(42) content of the medium to its transient peak. Experiments with Na indicate that its behavior in this respect is unlike that of K. The experimental data are matched to a simple model system which is capable of theoretical analysis with the aid of an analogue computer. The model system, whose characteristics agree fairly well with those observed experimentally on red cell suspensions, comprises two intracellular compartments, one containing 2.35 m.eq. K/liter blood, and the other 44.1 m.eq. K/liter blood. The plasma K content is 2.64 m.eq./liter blood. The flux between plasma and the smaller intracellular compartment is 0.65 m.eq. K/liter blood hour; that between the smaller and the larger intracellular compartment, 1.77 m.eq. K/liter blood hour; and that between the larger intracellular compartment and the plasma is 0.34 m.eq. K/liter blood hour.