Related papers: Force balance and membrane shedding at the Red Blo…
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…
We measure the dynamical mechanical properties of human red blood cells. Single cell response is measured with optical tweezers. We investigate both the stress relaxation following a fast deformation, and the effect of varying the strain…
Blood viscosity decreases with shear stress, a property essential for an efficient perfusion of the vascular tree. Shear-thinning is intimately related to the dynamics and mutual interactions of red blood cells (RBCs), the major…
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is currently used to design and improve the hydraulic properties of biomedical devices, wherein the large scale blood circulation needs to be simulated by accounting for the mechanical response of red…
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 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…
The plasma membrane of human red blood cells consists of a lipid bilayer attached to a regular network of underlying cytoskeletal polymers. We model this system at a dynamic coarse-grained level, treating the bilayer as an elastic sheet and…
How internal forces are transduced into motion through soft, fluid membranes remains a fundamental question in the study of active systems. To investigate this coupling, we develop a minimal system consisting of a single ferromagnetic…
We set up the statistical mechanics for a nearly flat, thermally equilibrated fluid membrane, attached to an elastic network through one of its sides. We predict that the resulting structural (inversion) asymmetry of the membrane, notably…
The analysis of non-equilibrium steady states of biochemical reaction networks relies on finding the configurations of fluxes and chemical potentials satisfying stoichiometric (mass balance) and thermodynamic (energy balance) constraints.…
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…
Membrane tension is an acknowledged regulator of a wide array of cell functions; however, whether it acts locally or globally in different contexts remains debated. Recent experiments that locally perturb tension and measure the response…
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…
The mechanical behaviour and symmetry-breaking shape deformation of red blood cells subjected to shear flows is used to demonstrate that far from being random fluids, both the membrane and cytoplasm of every biological cell undergo…
Microphase separation of membrane components is thought to play an important role in many physiological processes, from cell signaling to endocytosis and cellular trafficking. Here, we study how variations in the membrane composition can be…
The ability of cells to undergo reversible shape changes is often crucial to their survival. For Red Blood Cells (RBCs), irreversible alteration of the cell shape and flexibility often causes anemia. Here we show theoretically that RBCs may…
We propose a mechanism for mechanical regulation at the membrane of living cells, based on the exchange of membrane area between the cell membrane and a membrane reservoir. The reservoir is composed of invaginated membrane microdomains…
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 study the surface fluctuations of a tissue with a dynamics dictated by cell-rearrangement, cell-division, and cell-death processes. Surface fluctuations are calculated in the homeostatic state, where cell division and cell death…
Cell blebs are protrusions of the cell membrane and can be instrumental for cell migration. We derive a continuum model for the mechanical and geometrical aspects of the onset of blebbing in terms of a force balance. It is abstract and…