Berlin 2012 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 26: Posters: Membranes and Vesicles

BP 26.3: Poster

Thursday, March 29, 2012, 17:30–19:30, Poster A

Mathematical modelling of the surface change of erythrocytes due to mechanical influences — •Elisabeth Eckle and Richards Grzhibovskis — Applied Mathematics, Saarland University, Germany

Interactions of erythrocytes with artificial surfaces (e.g. specially prepared glass or a mesh of microfibers) attract a lot of attention from both experimental and modeling communities. Besides rapid changes in the shape of the cell, these phenomena feature forming of contact areas between the cell and the surface in question.

In spite of the overwhelming biochemical complexity of an erythrocyte, simple bilayer membrane models are widely used to gain an insight into a variety of processes it is involved in. We consider the classical Helfrich model of bilayer membranes with additional contact energy terms as well as total volume and surface area constraints. The equilibrium shapes of the cell are obtained numerically through a proper FEM discretization of the weak formulation of the gradient flow for the resulting energy functional. Computations are performed in three space dimensions. We study properties of the model by exploring its results for different physical parameters, discretizations, and configurations of the artificial surfaces.