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The human erythrocyte membrane skeleton may be an ionic gel

II. Numerical analyses of cell shapes and shape transformations

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Abstract

In the first paper in this series (Stokke et al. Eur Biophys J 1986, 13:203–218) we developed the general theory of the mechanochemical properties and the elastic free energy of the protein gel — lipid bilayer membrane model. Here we report on an extensive numerical analysis of the human erythrocyte shapes and shape transformations predicted by this new cell membrane model. We have calculated the total elastic free energy of deformation of four different cell shape classes: disc-shaped cells, cup-shaped cells, crenated cells, and cells with membrane invaginations. We find that which of these shape classes is favoured depends strongly on the spectrin gel osmotic tension, ΠGu, and the surface tensions, ΠEu and ΠPu, of the extracellular and protoplasmic halves of the membrane lipid bilayer, respectively. For constant ratio ΠEu/ΠPu>0 large negative or positive values of ΠGu favour respectively the crenated and invaginated cell shape classes. For small absolute values of ΠGu, ΠEu, and ΠPu, biconcave or cup-shaped cells are the stable ones. Our numerical analysis shows that the higher the membrane skeleton compressibility is, the smaller are the values of ΠGu needed to induce cell shape transformation. We find that the stable and metastable shapes of discocytes and stomatocytes generally depend both on the shape of the stressfree membrane skeleton and the membrane skeleton compressibility.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Biophysics, University of Trondheim, N-7034, Trondheim-NTH, Norway

    B. T. Stokke, A. Mikkelsen & A. Elgsaeter

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  1. B. T. Stokke
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  2. A. Mikkelsen
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  3. A. Elgsaeter
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Stokke, B.T., Mikkelsen, A. & Elgsaeter, A. The human erythrocyte membrane skeleton may be an ionic gel. Eur Biophys J 13, 219–233 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00260369

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