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Deformation behaviour of stomatocyte, discocyte and echinocyte red blood cell morphologies during optical tweezers stretching

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Abstract

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.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the Australian Research Council for their financial support through Linkage Grant (LP150100737), and Queensland University of Technology (QUT) for the financial assistance through QUT Postgraduate Research Award (QUTPRA), Higher Degree Research (HDR) Tuition Fee Sponsorship and QUT Excellence Top-Up Scholarship. Support provided by Dr. HN Polwaththe-Gallage, Dr. S Barns, QUT’s High Performance Computer Resources (HPC) and the Australian Red Cross Lifeblood is gratefully acknowledged. The Australian Government fully fund the Australian Red Cross Lifeblood for the provision of blood, blood products and services to the Australian community.

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  1. School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering, Science and Engineering Faculty, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    N. M. Geekiyanage, E. Sauret & Y. T. Gu

  2. University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Ultimo, NSW, Australia

    S. C. Saha

  3. Research and Development, Australian Red Cross Lifeblood, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    R. L. Flower

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  1. N. M. Geekiyanage
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  2. E. Sauret
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  3. S. C. Saha
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  4. R. L. Flower
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  5. Y. T. Gu
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Contributions

Geekiyanage developed the CG–RBC model and algorithm, performed modelling, data analysis and composed the manuscript. Sauret guided the model development, data analysis and revised the manuscript. Saha revised the manuscript. Flower revised the manuscript. Gu guided the model development and revised the manuscript.

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Correspondence to E. Sauret.

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Geekiyanage, N.M., Sauret, E., Saha, S.C. et al. Deformation behaviour of stomatocyte, discocyte and echinocyte red blood cell morphologies during optical tweezers stretching. Biomech Model Mechanobiol 19, 1827–1843 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10237-020-01311-w

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