ArticleCellular microbiology2021
Surface area-to-volume ratio, not cellular viscoelasticity, is the major determinant of red blood cell traversal through small channels.
Article in Cellular microbiology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- A Microfluidic Approach for Assessing the Rheological Properties of Healthy Versus Thalassemic Red Blood Cells.Micromachines · 2025Article
- Red Blood Cells and Human Aging: Exploring Their Biomarker Potential.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Buckling of red blood cell membrane in narrow capillaries induces excessive wall shear stress.Biophysical journal · 2025Article
- Plasma membrane folding enables constant surface area-to-volume ratio in growing mammalian cells.Current biology : CB · 2025Article
- Plasma membrane folding enables constant surface area-to-volume ratio in growing mammalian cells.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Biomechanics of phagocytosis of red blood cells by macrophages in the human spleen.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Deformability of Heterogeneous Red Blood Cells in Aging and Related Pathologies.Aging and disease · 2024Review
- The volume of healthy red blood cells is optimal for advective oxygen transport in arterioles.Biophysical journal · 2024Article
- Changes to the shape, orientation and packing of red cells as a function of retinal capillary size.Biomedical optics express · 2024Article
- A Simplified Method for Calculating Surface Area of Mammalian Erythrocytes.Methods and protocols · 2024Article
- Article
- The structure of a Plasmodium vivax Tryptophan Rich Antigen domain suggests a lipid binding function for a pan-Plasmodium multi-gene family.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Effects of membrane viscoelasticity on the red blood cell dynamics in a microcapillary.Biophysical journal · 2023Article
- Atomic force microscopy reveals involvement of the cell envelope in biomechanical properties of sickle erythrocytes.BMC biology · 2023Article
- Biosensing of Haemorheological Properties Using Microblood Flow Manipulation and Quantification.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Autologous Blood Doping Induced Changes in Red Blood Cell Rheologic Parameters, RBC Age Distribution, and Performance.Biology · 2022Article
- Shape transformations of red blood cells in the capillary and their possible connections to oxygen transportation.Journal of biological physics · 2022Article
- 5WBF: a low-cost and straightforward whole blood filtration method suitable for whole-genome sequencing of Plasmodium falciparum clinical isolates.Malaria journal · 2022Article
- Biophysical Tools and Concepts Enable Understanding of Asexual Blood Stage Malaria.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2022Review
- Multimodal imaging reveals membrane skeleton reorganisation during reticulocyte maturation and differences in dimple and rim regions of mature erythrocytes.Journal of structural biology: X · 2022Article
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13 authors.
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Abstract
The remarkable deformability of red blood cells (RBCs) depends on the viscoelasticity of the plasma membrane and cell contents and the surface area to volume (SA:V) ratio; however, it remains unclear which of these factors is the key determinant for passage through small capillaries. We used a microfluidic device to examine the traversal of normal, stiffened, swollen, parasitised and immature RBCs. We show that dramatic stiffening of RBCs had no measurable effect on their ability to traverse small channels. By contrast, a moderate decrease in the SA:V ratio had a marked effect on the equivalent cylinder diameter that is traversable by RBCs of similar cellular viscoelasticity. We developed a finite element model that provides a coherent rationale for the experimental observations, based on the nonlinear mechanical behaviour of the RBC membrane skeleton. We conclude that the SA:V ratio should be given more prominence in studies of RBC pathologies.
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