A particle-based computational model to analyse remodelling of the red blood cell cytoskeleton during malaria infections
Fig 4
(A) Snapshot of the simulation at shear 1.0 in the x-direction. Junctional points are modelled as single actin particles. (B) Same as in a but now the junctions are modelled as full actin filaments. (C) Examples of actin filaments at different lengths within the network. (D-H) Stress is plotted against shear extracted from simulations with a shear rate of 3 ⋅ 105 s−1. Each line corresponds to the average of 10 simulations. In D and G single particles are used as actin junctions whereas in E and H the proper actin filaments are implemented. In D and E the spectrin filaments are modelled without angle potentials and the anchoring sites are free to diffuse in the bilayer plane. In G and H the spectrin angle potential constant has a strength of 4.28 kJ mol−1 and the anchoring sites possess a reduced diffusion due to anchoring in the bilayer. (F) The stress response to shearing is plotted for different average filament lengths as indicated in the legend. Sheared networks are taken from all different concentrations and time points of simulations with capping proteins. The black line is for a perfect network with exactly N = 6 actin beads per filament and serves as a reference. (I) The final stress from C is now plotted against the average filament length with the colours indicating the different initial concentrations as shown in the legend.