Fig. 1.

Micropolarity maps of control and cholesterol-depleted RBC. (A) A representative submicrometric membrane micropolarity map of RBC. According to the GP values, each pixel’s color spans from red (high membrane micropolarity, low GP) to green (low membrane micropolarity, high GP). Treatment with 10 mM methyl-β-cyclodextrin, by depleting cholesterol, induces an increase in membrane micropolarity, resulting in a shift of GP distribution towards lower values (scale bar is 10 μm and 7 μm, respectively). (B) Average GP of healthy (green) and MβCD-treated (red) RBC is reported in the histogram. Mean value shifts from 0.56 to 0.49 when cholesterol is removed. Error bars indicate standard deviation of the data. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)