Some morphological consequences of uncoupling the lipid bilayer from the plasma membrane skeleton in intact erythrocytes.

Various procedures which achieve the local separation of the lipid bilayer portion of the plasma membrane from the membrane skeleton cause a destabilisation of the lamellar form of the bilayer and release of bilayer microvesicles containing encapsulated cytosol. These procedures can give us information concerning the composition of the bilayer, the nature of its interaction with the membrane skeleton and the mechanism of the membrane fusion events which are involved in vesiculation. Bilayer microvesicles appear to retain the phospholipid orientation of the original cells, suggesting that spectrin is not essential for the maintenance of lipid asymmetry.