Measurement of the nonlinear elasticity of red blood cell membranes
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Park-2011-Measurement of the n.pdf
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Author(s)
Park, YongKeun
Best, Catherine A.
Kuriabova, Tatiana
Henle, Mark L.
Feld, Michael S.
Levine, Alex J.
Popescu, Gabriel
Date Issued
May 2011
Journal
Physical review E
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Park, YongKeun et al. “Measurement of the Nonlinear Elasticity of Red Blood Cell Membranes.” Physical Review E 83.5 (2011) : n. pag. ©2011 American Physical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The membranes of human red blood cells (RBCs) are a composite of a fluid lipid bilayer and a triangular network of semiflexible filaments (spectrin). We perform cellular microrheology using the dynamic membrane fluctuations of the RBCs to extract the elastic moduli of this composite membrane. By applying known osmotic stresses, we measure the changes in the elastic constants under imposed strain and thereby determine the nonlinear elastic properties of the membrane. We find that the elastic nonlinearities of the shear modulus in tensed RBC membranes can be well understood in terms of a simple wormlike chain model. Our results show that the elasticity of the spectrin network can mostly account for the area compression modulus at physiological osmolality, suggesting that the lipid bilayer has significant excess area. As the cell swells, the elastic contribution from the now tensed lipid membrane becomes dominant.
MIT Department
Harvard University--MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Spectroscopy Laboratory
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.83.051925
