Fig. 1

Stage-specific and erythrocyte variant-specific adhesion dynamics. a Schematic drawing of the experimental set up. P. falciparum-infected erythrocytes labeled with SYBR Green were superfused over a confluent human dermal microvascular endothelial cell monolayer at controlled hydrodynamic conditions. The motion behavior of infected erythrocytes was recorded by fluorescence microscopy, with the focal plane positioned on top of the endothelial cell monolayer. b Motion behavior of a single infected erythrocyte as defined by the fluorescence amplitude and the translational velocity trajectories. From the trajectories, the mean translational velocity, the amplitude difference, the contact time, and the Pearson correlation coefficient between the amplitude and the velocity trajectories were obtained. c–f Representative trajectories of the translational velocity, v, and fluorescence amplitude, A, of infected HbAA and HbAS erythrocytes at the trophozoite and schizont stage. The red arrows indicate velocity peaks, suggestive of a transient detachment of the parasitized HbAS erythrocyte from the substratum. The corresponding movies to the selected trajectories can be found in the supplementary information (Supplementary Movies 1-4). Wall shear stress, 0.03 Pa. a.u., arbitrary unit