Regensburg 2013 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 24: Posters: Physics of Cells

BP 24.33: Poster

Wednesday, March 13, 2013, 17:30–19:30, Poster C

Quantification and Simulation of Depletion Induced Red Blood Cell-Cell Adhesion — •Elisabeth Eckle, Richards Grzibovskis, Patrick Steffen, and Christian Wagner — Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany

Interactions between cellular components of blood such as aggregation, agglutination or adhesion of cells are observed in a variety of normal and pathological conditions like, for example, rouleaux formation, platelet adhesion and aggregation in both thrombosis and haemostatic clot formation. The aggregation of erythrocytes can be seen if the red blood cells are re-suspended in electrolyte solutions containing neutral macromolecules like dextran. The aggregation of erythrocytes is completely reversible and the disaggregation of these rouleauxs is readily achieved by shearing the suspension. In this study, AFM based single cell force spectroscopy was used to investigate the interaction of single red blood cells in various dextran concentrations. To numerically simulate this interaction, a mathematical model based on free energy minimization was formulated. The equilibrium shape of red blood cell was obtained by means of the minimization of the surface bending energy functional and the interaction supports via the interaction potential. The calculated results have been compared with the experimental results.