Creep and stress relaxation of human red cell membrane

详细信息    查看全文

• 作者：Thomas M. Fischer
• 关键词：Characteristic time of creep ; Characteristic time of stress relaxation ; Echinocyte ; Membrane skeleton ; Plastic behavior
• 刊名：Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：February 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：16
• 期：1
• 页码：239-247
• 全文大小：
• 刊物类别：Engineering
• 刊物主题：Theoretical and Applied Mechanics; Biomedical Engineering; Biological and Medical Physics, Biophysics;
• 出版者：Springer Berlin Heidelberg
• ISSN：1617-7940
• 卷排序：16

文摘

In contrast to most mechanical properties of the red cell, experimental information on stress relaxation (SR) of the membrane skeleton is scarce. On the other hand, many postulates or assumptions as to the value of the characteristic time of SR \((\tau _{\mathrm{SR}})\) can be found in the literature. Here, an experiment is presented that allows measurement of \(\tau _{\mathrm{SR}}\) up to values of about 10 h. The membrane skeleton was deformed passively by changing the spontaneous curvature of the bilayer thus transforming the natively biconcave red cells into echinocytes. This shape and the concomitant deformation of the skeleton were kept up to 4 h by incubation at 37 ℃. During this period, no plastic deformation (creep) was observed. After the incubation, the spontaneous curvature was returned to normal. The resulting shape was smooth showing no remnants of the echinocytic shape. Both observations indicate \(\tau _{\mathrm{SR}}\gtrapprox \) 10 h. This result is in gross disagreement to postulates or assumptions existing in the literature.