We have studied intracellular polymerization of hemoglobin S in suspensions of small
populations of sickle cells using circular polarized light scattering. We argue that the
preferential scattering of right circular polarized light (as expressed by measurements of the
S 14 Mueller scattering matrix element) directly reflects the amount of polymer inside cells.
This technique has made it possible to investigate the effect of oxygen tension, cell density
and osmotic stress on intracellular hemoglobin polymerization. Using S 14 to determine …