Reversibility of red blood cell deformation.

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 react irreversibly to mechanical perturbations because of tensile stress in their cytoskeleton. The transient polymerization of protein fibers inside the cell seen in sickle cell anemia or a transient external force can trigger the formation of a cytoskeleton-free membrane protrusion of μm dimensions. The complex relaxation kinetics of the cell shape is shown to be responsible for selecting the final state once the perturbation is removed, thereby controlling the reversibility of the deformation. In some case, tubular protrusion are expected to relax via a peculiar "pearling instability."

• Publication year

  2011

• Venue

  Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics

• Publication date

  2011-11-22

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Physics, Chemistry

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1103/PhysRevE.85.051904arXiv 1111.5187PMID 23004785
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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