A particle-based computational model to analyse remodelling of the red blood cell cytoskeleton during malaria infections
Fig 2
Particle-based model for the RBC cytoskeleton.
(A) Schematic of the spectrin tetramer structure at the top and implementation in the simulation at the bottom. Differently coloured beads have different properties that represent the interactions of the spectrin filaments with actin, ankyrin and KAHRP. (B) Implementation of dynamic actin filaments in the simulations. The top filament can polymerize at both ends with different rates at the barbed (b) and pointed (p) ends. For the filament at the bottom the polymerization is blocked, since the capping proteins adducin (a) and tropomodulin (t) are attached. (C) The potentials used in the simulations are plotted against particle separation. (D) The initial configuration of a typical simulation is shown as a projection along the z-direction. The simulation box has periodic boundaries and a size of 140 × 242.48 × 100 nm−3. G-actin particles are shown in grey. An example simulation can be seen in the S1 Movie. (E) Equilibrated state of the network.