Dresden 2017 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 64: Physics of Parasites - Joint Focus Session (BP/DY) organized by Holger Stark

DY 64.2: Talk

Friday, March 24, 2017, 10:00–10:30, SCH A251

Shape and adhesiveness of malaria-infected red blood cells — Anil Kumar Dasanna, Marco Linke, Mailin Waldecker, Christine Lansche, Sirikamol Srismith, Marek Cyrklaff, Cecilia P. Sanchez, Michael Lanzer, and •Ulrich S. Schwarz — Heidelberg University

An infection of a red blood cell by the malaria parasite takes approximately 48 hours and during this time, the host cell is completely remodelled by the parasite. In particular, the parasite induces an adhesive structure on the host cell surface that keeps the infected red blood cell (iRBC) in the vasculature for a longer time and thus avoids clearance by the spleen. At the end of the infectious cycle, the iRBC ruptures and around 20 new parasites are released into the blood stream. Using fluorescence microscopy and image processing, we have found experimentally that during this process, the surface area of the iRBC is relatively constant, while the volume increases by 60 percent due to increased osmotic pressure, leading to a final reduced volume of 1 and thus to a spherical shape. This shape transition becomes apparent at the schizont stage (40 hours after infection). Using flow chamber experiments, we show that at the same time, the movement of iRBC under flow on endothelial monolayers changes from flipping to rolling adhesion. Using adhesive dynamics simulations, we systematically predict the effect of the adhesive structure on the rolling adhesion of schizont-stage iRBC, in good agreement with our experimental results.