Computational modeling of the micropipette aspiration of malaria infected erythrocytes

Abstract

Malaria is a deadly human disease that infects more than 500 million people each year. When the human red blood cell (RBC) is infected by a malaria parasite called Plasmodium falciparum, it loses its deformability and is unable to squeeze through small capillaries to transport oxygen to the various parts of the human body. Among the various techniques that have been used to quantitatively study the mechanical properties of malaria infected RBCs, micropipette aspiration has its advantage in exerting a wide range of suction pressure on specific locations of the cell membrane. Hemispherical cap model and homogenous half-space model were also developed to calculate the elastic modulus of the aspirated cell. Here, a detailed multi-component model is developed to model the complex infected cell and to study the membrane shear elastic modulus of the infected RBCs, especially during their mid to late stages of infection and when the parasite occupies a non-negligible volume of the host cell. The results show that the membrane shear modulus of a late stage infected cell calculated by the commonly used hemispherical cap model may not be accurate due to its ignorance of the internal structural changes of the host cell.