2001/08/27 by Ranjan Mukhopadhyay, Gerald H. W. Lim, H.W. Gerald Lim +1 · 3 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #Blood properties and coagulation #Erythrocyte Function and Pathophysiology #Lipid Membrane Structure and Behavior #cond-mat.soft #physics.bio-ph #q-bio
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/s0006-3495(02)75527-6
Revtex, 27 pages, 8 figures; some minor changes
arxiv created 2001/08/27 · openalex publication_date 2002/04/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
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 which sets the length scale for the spicules and is, thus, related to the number of spicules experimentally observed on the fully developed echinocyte.