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IRTG / Soft Matter Science
Freiburger Materialforschungszentrum
Stefan-Meier-Str. 21
79104 Freiburg, Germany

softmattergraduate[at]uni-freiburg.de


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You are here: Home Events Prof. Christian Wagner "Adhesion strengths, shapes and the dynamics of macromolecule-induced cell clusters at stasis and in microcapillary flow"

Prof. Christian Wagner "Adhesion strengths, shapes and the dynamics of macromolecule-induced cell clusters at stasis and in microcapillary flow"

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Experimental Physics, Saarland University, Germany

What
  • Seminar
When Oct 28, 2015
from 02:15 PM to 03:00 PM
Where Seminarraum A, FMF, Stefan-Meier-Str. 21, Freiburg
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The addition of specific macromolecules to a physiological solution containing red blood cells (RBC) leads to the formation of aggregates that are similar to the well-known rouleaux shape.  Recently, we used single cell force spectroscopy to characterize typical adhesion energies, both for dextran and fibrinogen. We used confocal microscopy and numerical simulations to study the topology of these aggregates as a function of the adhesion energy.  Our in vitro, in vivo and numerical studies show that despite large shear rates, the presence of either fibrinogen or the synthetic polymer dextran leads to an enhanced formation of robust clusters of RBC in microcapillaries under flow conditions.  However, the contribution of hydrodynamic interactions and interactions induced by the presence of macromolecules in the cluster formation has not been established. In order to elucidate this mechanism, we used  microchannels under flow conditions in order to compare pure hydrodynamical cluster formation of RBC and cluster formation of RBC in the presence of macromolecules inducing aggregation.  The results reveal strong differences in the cluster morphology.  In the case of clusters formed by two cells, the surface-to-surface distance between cells in the different solutions shows a bimodal distribution that can be reproduced with our numerical simulations by varying the bending rigidity of the cell membrane within the tabulated range reported in healthy physiological conditions.
 

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