Author(s)

A. Iglic

Abstract

In this work the stability of spiculated red blood cells, called also echinocytes, is studied. We assume that the stable echinocyte shape corresponds to the minimum of its membrane elastic energy. It is shown that by neglecting the membrane shear elasticity the calculated stable echinocyte shapes always have only one spicule. However by taking into account also the membrane shear elastic energy the calculated stable echinocyte shapes have many spicula in agreement with experimental observations. 1 Introduction The normal shape of red blood cells (RBC) is the biconcave discoid shape. Under various external conditions these normal RBCs (discocytes) may be transformed into various other shapes such as cup shapes or echinocyte shapes [1]. Echin

Keywords