Related papers: Reversibility of Red blood Cell deformation
Homogeneous suspensions of red blood cells (RBCs or erythrocytes) in blood plasma are unstable in the absence of driving forces and form elongated stacks, called rouleau. These erythrocyte aggregates are often branched porous networks -- a…
Eukaryote cells have a flexible shape, which dynamically changes according to the function performed by the cell. One mechanism for deforming the cell membrane into the desired shape is through the expression of curved membrane proteins.…
A photosensitive amphiphilic molecule can switch the shape of an assembled vesicle as determined by microscopic observation. Photo-isomerization induces a change in membrane fluctuation behavior or a morphological transition between…
Red blood cells (RBCs) are the major component of blood and the flow of blood is dictated by that of RBCs. We employ vesicles, which consist of closed bilayer membranes enclosing a fluid, as a model system to study the behavior of RBCs…
Red blood cells (RBCs) sustain mechanical stresses associated with microcirculatory flow through ATP-driven plasma membrane flickering. This is an active phenomenon driven by motor proteins that regulate interactions between the spectrin…
We use mesoscale numerical simulations to investigate the unsteady dynamics of a single red blood cell (RBC) subjected to an external mechanical load. We carry out a detailed comparison between the {\it loading} (L) dynamics, following the…
Blood leukocytes can exhibit extensive morphological changes during their passage through small capillary vessels. The human monocytic THP-1 cell line was used to explore the metabolic dependence of these shape changes. Cells were aspirated…
The fast blood stream of animals is associated with large shear stresses. Consequently, blood cells have evolved a special morphology and a specific internal architecture allowing them to maintain their integrity over several weeks. For…
Cells modify their volume in response to changes in osmotic pressure but it is usually assumed that other active shape variations do not involve significant volume fluctuations. Here we report experiments demonstrating that water transport…
Red blood cells (RBCs) are vital for transporting oxygen from the lungs to the body's tissues through the intricate circulatory system. They achieve this by binding and releasing oxygen molecules to the abundant hemoglobin within their…
Margination, a fundamental process in which leukocytes migrate from the flowing blood to the vessel wall, is well-documented in physiology. However, it is still an open question on how the differences in cell size and stiffness of white and…
Cell extrusion is an essential mechanism for controlling cell density in epithelial tissues. Another essential element of epithelia is curvature, which is required to achieve complex shapes, like in the lung or intestine. Here we introduce…
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…
We present a rigorous procedure to derive coarse-grained red blood cell (RBC) models, which lead to accurate mechanical properties of realistic RBCs. Based on a semi-analytic theory linear and non-linear elastic properties of the RBC…
Existing hemolysis algorithms are often constructed for laminar flows that expose red blood cells to a constant rate of shear. It remains an open question whether such models are applicable to turbulent flows, where there is a significant…
Red blood cells (RBCs) are a major component of blood clots, which form physiologically as a response to injury or pathologically in thrombosis. The active participation of RBCs in thrombus solidification has been previously proposed but…
Partitioning of red blood cells (RBCs) at the level of bifurcations in the microcirculatory system affects many physiological functions yet it remains poorly understood. We address this problem by using T-shaped microfluidic bifurcations as…
We reveal that under moderate shear stress (of the order of 0.1 Pa) red blood cells present an oscillation of their inclination (swinging) superimposed to the long-observed steady tanktreading (TT) motion. A model based on a fluid ellipsoid…
Microcapsules with liquid cores encapsulated by thin membranes have many applications in science, medicine and industry. In this paper, we design a suspension of microcapsules which flow and deform like red blood cells (RBCs), as a valuable…
A simple mechanism for the confinement of red cells in the middle of narrow blood vessels is proposed. In the presence of a quadratic shear, red cells deform in such a way to loose fore-aft symmetry and to achieve a fixed orientation with…