A Gaussian model for the membrane of red blood cells with cytoskeletal defects

Abstract

We study a Gaussian model of the membrane of red blood cells: a "phantom" triangular network of springs attached at its vertices to a fluid bilayer with curvature elasticity and tension. We calculate its fluctuation spectrum and we discuss the different regimes and non-monotonic features, including the precise crossover at the mesh size between the already known limits with two different tensions and the renormalisation of the bending rigidity at low wavevectors. We also show that the non-diagonal correlations reveal, in "dark field", the cytoskeletal defects. As a first step toward a non-invasive defect spectroscopy, the specific case of lacking bonds is studied numerically and analytically.

References in corpus (3)

• Echinocyte Shapes: Bending, Stretching and Shear Determine Spicule Shape and Spacing
• Fluctuation spectrum of fluid membranes coupled to an elastic meshwork: jump of the effective surface tension at the mesh size
• Non-monotonic fluctuation spectra of membranes pinned or tethered discretely to a substrate

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Force balance and membrane shedding at the Red Blood Cell surface
• Membrane fluctuations near a plane rigid surface
• Cytoskeleton mediated effective elastic properties of model red blood cell membranes
• Fluctuation spectra of free and supported membrane pairs
• Fluctuations of red blood cell membranes: The role of cytoskeleton
• Dynamics of a Bilayer Membrane Coupled to a Two-dimensional Cytoskeleton: Scale Transfers of Membrane Deformations