A POSSIBLE MECHANISM DETERMINING THE STABILITY OF SPICULATED RED-BLOOD-CELLS

In this work the stability of spiculated red blood cells, caned echino cytes, is studied. It is assumed that the stable echinocyte shape corr esponds to the minimum of its membrane elastic energy. It is shown tha t if the membrane skeleton shear elasticity is not taken into account the calculated stable echinocyte shapes always have only one spicule. However, by considering the skeleton shear elastic energy also, the ca lculated stable echinocyte shapes have many spicula in agreement with experimental observations. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.