Effects of membrane viscoelasticity on the red blood cell dynamics in a microcapillary

The mechanical properties of red blood cells (RBCs) play key roles in their biological functions in microcirculation. In particular, RBCs must deform significantly to travel through microcapillaries with sizes comparable with or even smaller than their own. Although the dynamics of RBCs in microcapillaries have received considerable attention, the effect of membrane viscoelasticity has been largely overlooked. In this work, we present a computational study based on the boundary integral method and thin-shell mechanics to examine how membrane viscoelasticity influences the dynamics of RBCs flowing through straight and constricted microcapillaries. Our results reveal that the cell with a viscoelastic membrane undergoes substantially different motion and deformation compared with results based on a purely elastic membrane model. Comparisons with exper-imental data also suggest the importance of accounting for membrane viscoelasticity to properly capture the transient dynamics of an RBC flowing through a microcapillary. Taken together, these findings demonstrate the significant effects of membrane viscoelasticity on RBC dynamics in different microcapillary environments. The computational framework also lays the ground-work for more accurate quantitative modeling of the mechanical response of RBCs in their mechanotransduction process in subsequent investigations.

Automated summary

The mechanical properties of red blood cells (RBCs) are crucial for their biological functions in microcirculation. This study investigates the influence of membrane viscoelasticity on the dynamics of RBCs flowing through microcapillaries using computational simulations. The results demonstrate significant differences in motion and deformation between cells with viscoelastic membranes and those with purely elastic ones. The findings highlight the importance of considering membrane viscoelasticity in capturing the transient dynamics of RBCs in microcapillaries.