Berlin 2018 – scientific programme
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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik
CPP 43: Membranes and Vesicles I (joint session BP/CPP)
CPP 43.6: Talk
Wednesday, March 14, 2018, 10:45–11:00, H 1028
Membrane fluctuations of malaria-infected red blood cells — •Julia Jäger1,2, Benjamin Fröhlich3, Motomu Tanaka3, Michael Lanzer4, and Ulrich Schwarz1,2 — 1Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Heidelberg — 2Bioquant, Universität Heidelberg — 3Institut für Physikalische Chemie, Universität Heidelberg — 4Parasitologie, UniversitätsKlinikum Heidelberg
Once inside the body, malaria parasites invade red blood cells in order to hide from the immune system and to digest hemoglobin. Over the course of 48 hours the parasite completely remodels the red blood cell, so that the cell becomes round and stiff and eventually breaks open. One way to monitor this remodeling process is the measurement of the cell membrane's flickering spectrum, which is a standard approach to extract the mechanical properties of cell membranes. In addition to the usual interface Hamiltonian for the membrane, we take into account the connections between the outer lipid bilayer and the spectrin network underlying the plasma membrane, which are known to become increasingly clustered over the course of the infection. We focus on the confinement parameter in the interface Hamiltonian and show how it scales with the number and strength of the connections. Finally, we compare our results with experiments.