Related papers: Cytoskeleton mediated effective elastic properties…
We analyze both the static and dynamic fluctuation spectrum of the red-blood cell in a unified manner, using a simple model of the composite membrane. In this model, the two-dimensional spectrin network that forms the cytoskeleton is…
The red blood cell (RBC) membrane is composed of a lipid bilayer and a cytoskeleton interconnected by protein junction complexes, allowing for potential sliding between the lipid bilayer and the cytoskeleton. Despite this biological…
We theoretically investigate the membrane fluctuations of red blood cells with focus laid on the role of the cytoskeleton, viewing the system as a membrane coupled to sparse spring network. This model is exactly solvable and enables us to…
The functions and elasticities of the cell are largely related to the structures of the cytoskeletons underlying the lipid bi-layer. Among various cell types, the Red Blood Cell (RBC) possesses a relatively simple cytoskeletal structure.…
A cell membrane can be simply regarded as composite material consisting of lipid bilayer, membrane cytoskeleton beneath lipid bilayer, and proteins embedded in lipid bilayer and linked with membrane cytoskeleton if one only concerns its…
Blebs are balloon-shaped membrane protrusions that form during many physiological processes. Using computer simulation of a particle-based model for self-assembled lipid bilayers coupled to an elastic meshwork, we investigated the phase…
Constancy of life vitally depends on the internalization of particles through biomembranes. Of particular interest, cellular uptake, including phagocytosis, receptor-mediated endocytosis, and membrane fusion, critically depends on the…
We argue that the paradoxal softness of the red blood cells (RBC) in fluctuation spectra experiments is apparent. We show that the effective surface shear modulus $\mu_s$ of the RBC obtained from fluctuation data and that measured in static…
The multi-cellular hydrodynamic interactions play a critical role in the phenomenology of blood flow in the microcirculation. A fast algorithm has been developed to simulate large numbers of cells modeled as elastic thin membranes. For red…
The linear viscoelastic behavior of the red blood cell membrane of mammal and human was studied in previous works proposing different experimental methods to determine their viscoelastic parameters. In the present work the nonlinear…
We identify a class of composite membranes: fluid bilayers coupled to an elastic meshwork, that are such that the meshwork's energy is a function $F_\mathrm{el}[A_\xi]$ \textit{not} of the real microscopic membrane area $A$, but of a…
We theoretically investigate the dynamics of a floating lipid bilayer membrane coupled with a two-dimensional cytoskeleton network, taking into explicitly account the intermonolayer friction, the discrete lattice structure of the…
Red blood cells (RBCs) are an essential component of blood. A method to include the particulate nature of blood is introduced here with the goal of studying circulation in large-scale realistic vessels. The method uses a combination of the…
We present a simple, and physically motivated, coarse-grained model of a lipid bilayer, suited for micron scale computer simulations. Each ~25 nm^2 patch of bilayer is represented by a spherical particle. Mimicking forces of hydrophobic…
The cytoskeleton -- a collection of polymeric filaments, molecular motors, and crosslinkers -- is a foundational example of active matter, and in the cell assembles into organelles that guide basic biological functions. Simulation of…
Human blood flow is a multi-scale problem: in first approximation, blood is a dense suspension of plasma and deformable red cells. Physiological vessel diameters range from about one to thousands of cell radii. Current computational models…
Plasma membranes appear as deformable systems wherein molecules are free to move and diffuse giving rise to condensed microdomains (composed of ordered lipids, transmembrane proteins and cholesterol) surrounded by disordered lipid…
Cellular membranes are elastic lipid bilayers that contain a variety of proteins, including ion channels, receptors, and scaffolding proteins. These proteins are known to diffuse in the plane of the membrane and to influence the bending of…
In this paper we present the results of a large-scale numerical investigation of structural properties of a model of cell membrane, simulated as a bilayer of flexible molecules in vacuum. The study was performed by carrying out extensive…
Many cytoskeletal systems are now sufficiently well known to permit their precise quantitative modelling. Microtubule and actin filaments are well characterized, and the associated proteins are often known, as well as their abundance and…