The red blood cell (RBC) deformability is a critical aspect, and assessing the cell deformation characteristics is essential for better diagnostics of healthy and deteriorating RBCs. There is a need to explore the connection between the cell deformation characteristics, cell morphology, disease states, storage lesion and cell shape-transformation conditions for better diagnostics and treatments. A numerical approach inspired from the previous research for RBC morphology predictions and for analysis of RBC deformations is proposed for the first time, to investigate the deformation characteristics of different RBC morphologies. The present study investigates the deformability characteristics of stomatocyte, discocyte and echinocyte morphologies during optical tweezers stretching and provides the opportunity to study the combined contribution of cytoskeletal spectrin network and the lipid-bilayer during RBC deformation. The proposed numerical approach predicts agreeable deformation characteristics of the healthy discocyte with the analogous experimental observations and is extended to further investigate the deformation characteristics of stomatocyte and echinocyte morphologies. In particular, the computer simulations are performed to investigate the influence of direct stretching forces on different equilibrium cell morphologies on cell spectrin link extensions and cell elongation index, along with a parametric analysis on membrane shear modulus, spectrin link extensibility, bending modulus and RBC membrane-bead contact diameter. The results agree with the experimentally observed stiffer nature of stomatocyte and echinocyte with respect to a healthy discocyte at experimentally determined membrane characteristics and suggest the preservation of relevant morphological characteristics, changes in spectrin link densities and the primary contribution of cytoskeletal spectrin network on deformation behaviour of stomatocyte, discocyte and echinocyte morphologies during optical tweezers stretching deformation. The numerical approach presented here forms the foundation for investigations into deformation characteristics and recoverability of RBCs undergoing storage lesion.

中文翻译：

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镊子拉伸过程中口腔细胞，盘状细胞和棘突细胞红细胞形态的变形行为。

红细胞（RBC）的可变形性是一个关键方面，评估细胞变形特性对于更好地诊断健康和恶化的RBC至关重要。有必要探索细胞变形特征，细胞形态，疾病状态，贮存病变和细胞形状转化条件之间的联系，以进行更好的诊断和治疗。首次提出了一种基于先前研究的数值方法，用于RBC形态预测和RBC变形分析，以研究不同RBC形态的变形特性。本研究调查了口腔细胞的可变形性特征，镊子拉伸过程中的单核细胞和棘突细胞形态，并为研究红细胞变形过程中细胞骨架血影蛋白网络和脂质双层的综合作用提供了机会。拟议的数值方法可以通过类似的实验观察来预测健康的椎间盘细胞的良好变形特征，并可以扩展到进一步研究口腔细胞和棘突细胞形态的变形特征。特别地，进行计算机模拟以研究直接拉伸力对不同平衡细胞形态对细胞血影蛋白链延伸和细胞伸长指数的影响，以及对膜剪切模量，血影蛋白链延伸性，弯曲模量和RBC膜的参数分析。珠接触直径。结果与实验观察到的膜特性相比，实验观察到的气道细胞和棘突细胞相对于健康的盘状细胞具有更为坚硬的性质，并暗示了相关形态特征的保留，血影蛋白链密度的变化和细胞骨架血影蛋白网络对变形行为的主要贡献。镊子拉伸变形过程中的口腔细胞，盘状细胞和棘突细胞形态。这里提出的数值方法为研究遭受存储损伤的红细胞的变形特性和可恢复性奠定了基础。