Echinocyte Shapes: Bending, Stretching, and Shear Determine Spicule Shape and Spacing

We study the shapes of human red blood cells using continuum mechanics. In particular, we model the crenated, echinocytic shapes and show how they may arise from a competition between the bending energy of the plasma membrane and the stretching/shear elastic energies of the membrane skeleton. In con...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biophysical journal 2002-04, Vol.82 (4), p.1756-1772
Main Authors: Mukhopadhyay, Ranjan, Gerald Lim, H.W., Wortis, Michael
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Binding, Competitive
Biophysical Phenomena
Biophysics
Blood
Cell Membrane - metabolism
Cells
Cytoskeleton - metabolism
Erythrocytes - chemistry
Erythrocytes - cytology
Kinetics
Membranes
Models, Statistical
Plasma
Thermodynamics
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We study the shapes of human red blood cells using continuum mechanics. In particular, we model the crenated, echinocytic shapes and show how they may arise from a competition between the bending energy of the plasma membrane and the stretching/shear elastic energies of the membrane skeleton. In contrast to earlier work, we calculate spicule shapes exactly by solving the equations of continuum mechanics subject to appropriate boundary conditions. A simple scaling analysis of this competition reveals an elastic length Λ el, which sets the length scale for the spicules and is, thus, related to the number of spicules experimentally observed on the fully developed echinocyte.
ISSN:0006-3495
1542-0086
DOI:10.1016/S0006-3495(02)75527-6