Measurement of the nonlinear elasticity of red blood cell membranes

YongKeun Park, Catherine A. Best, Tatiana Kuriabova, Mark L. Henle, Michael S. Feld, Alex J. Levine, and Gabriel Popescu
Phys. Rev. E 83, 051925 – Published 27 May 2011

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.

    • Received 28 February 2010

    DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.83.051925

    ©2011 American Physical Society

    Authors & Affiliations

    YongKeun Park1,2,*, Catherine A. Best3, Tatiana Kuriabova4, Mark L. Henle5, Michael S. Feld1,†, Alex J. Levine6, and Gabriel Popescu7,‡

    • 1G. R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
    • 2Harvard-MIT Division of Health Science and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
    • 3College of Medicine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA
    • 4Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA
    • 5School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
    • 6Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry and Department of Physics & Astronomy, UCLA, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA
    • 7Quantitative Light Imaging Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science & Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA

    • *Present address: Department of Physics, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon 305-701, Republic of Korea
    • Deceased.
    • gpopescu@illinois.edu

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    Issue

    Vol. 83, Iss. 5 — May 2011

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