Regensburg 2013 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 24: Posters: Physics of Cells

BP 24.34: Poster

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

Mathematical Modelling of the Surface Change of Erythrocytes due to Mechanical Influences — •Elisabeth Eckle and Richards Grzibovskis — Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany

Interactions of erythrocytes with artificial surfaces (e.g. specially prepared glass or a mesh of microfibers) and between themselves 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 or another cell. 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.