Force balance and membrane shedding at the Red Blood Cell surface

Abstract

During the aging of the red-blood cell, or under conditions of extreme echinocytosis, membrane is shed from the cell plasma membrane in the form of nano-vesicles. We propose that this process is the result of the self-adaptation of the membrane surface area to the elastic stress imposed by the spectrin cytoskeleton, via the local buckling of membrane under increasing cytoskeleton stiffness. This model introduces the concept of force balance as a regulatory process at the cell membrane, and quantitatively reproduces the rate of area loss in aging red-blood cells.

4 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Fluctuation spectrum of fluid membranes coupled to an elastic meshwork: jump of the effective surface tension at the mesh size
• A Gaussian model for the membrane of red blood cells with cytoskeletal defects

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• Model of inverse bleb growth explains giant vacuole dynamics during cell mechanoadaptation
• Anisotropic short-range attractions precisely model branched erythrocyte aggregates
• Coarse-Grained Molecular Dynamics Modeling of Defective Erythrocyte Membrane and Sickle Hemoglobin Fibers