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Reduction of Erythrocyte Fluid Adaptability Due to Cell Membrane Hardening Based on Single-Cell Analysis

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Abstract

Because of the rapid development of precision medicine, single-cell analysis has attracted increasing research attention, especially for erythrocyte, whose potential role in the formation of vascular plaque (atherosclerosis) has emphasized the importance of flow characteristics of single erythrocytes in bionic microfluidics. Based on the high incidence of vascular plaques among the elderly and those who have received blood transfusions, we hypothesized that cell membrane hardening changes the fluid adaptability of individual erythrocytes. This hypothesis was verified using an in vitro microfluidic technique based on an analysis of the flow morphology and cell trajectory of individual cells. A symmetrical microchannel was fabricated with a central stenosis to simulate a blood vessel containing plaque. During flowing through this microchannel, normal erythrocyte predominantly exhibited deforming, rotating, and lifting morphologies, resulting in discontinuous contact with the channel wall and a narrower distribution. Conversely, hardened erythrocytes exhibited rolling, swinging, and tumbling morphologies, resulting in stable and continuous contact with the channel wall and a wider distribution. These results indicate that cell membrane hardening decrease cell fluid adaptability on a microscopic scale. This research can offer some new insights into vascular plaques research from a bio-tribological and mechanical perspectives.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants Nos. 51322501, 52005019 and 51420105006), and the Project funded by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2019M650419). the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (No. 51725501), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Key Program, No. 51935001), and the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2019YFB1309702). We thank Bing Dong for his support on this work, and thank Yu Lei for his help on English grammar.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Biomedical Engineering, Institute of Bionic and Micro-Nano Systems, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China

    Yuanyuan Chen, Xue Bai, Yanmin Feng, Lin Feng, Deyuan Zhang & Huawei Chen

  2. State Key Laboratory of Tribology, Mechanical Engineering Department, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Zhongnan Li & Haosheng Chen

Authors
  1. Yuanyuan Chen
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  2. Zhongnan Li
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  3. Xue Bai
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  4. Yanmin Feng
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  5. Lin Feng
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  6. Deyuan Zhang
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  7. Huawei Chen
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  8. Haosheng Chen
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Contributions

HSC conceived the idea and designed the experiment, YYC and ZNL carried out the experiments and analyzed the data. YYC wrote the paper. XB, YMF helped draw the figures. LF helped revise the paper. DYZ and HWC contributed to scientific discussion of the article. YYC and ZNL contributed equally to this work.

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Correspondence to Haosheng Chen.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary Information

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

13206_2021_5_MOESM1_ESM.docx

See supplementary material for the experimental details, modulus of erythrocytes with different state, the image processing details, and the erythrocytes flowed in narrower microchannel. (DOCX 1821 KB)

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Chen, Y., Li, Z., Bai, X. et al. Reduction of Erythrocyte Fluid Adaptability Due to Cell Membrane Hardening Based on Single-Cell Analysis. BioChip J 15, 90–99 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13206-021-00005-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13206-021-00005-4

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