Glucose transport carrier of human erythrocytes. Radiation target size measurement based on flux inactivation.

Intact human erythrocytes frozen in the presence of cryoprotective reagents and irradiated with an electron beam retained their diffusion barrier to L-glucose. The carrier-mediated flux of D-glucose, on the other hand, was inactivated as a simple exponential function of the radiation dose. Classical target size analysis of this data yielded a molecular size of 185,000 daltons for the carrier. This represents the first measurement of the functional size of a transport protein based directly on flux inactivation.