Fig. 5
From: Hemoglobin S and C affect biomechanical membrane properties of P. falciparum-infected erythrocytes
Graphic representation of key parameters of the numerical model. a Simplified model of the membrane skeleton, including the junctional complexes and AE-1-ankyrin junctions (left, uninfected) and additional anchoring structures via the knob components Plasmodium falciparum erythrocyte membrane protein 1 (PfEMP1) and knob-associated histidine rich protein (KAHRP) (right, trophozoite). b The structure of a singular anchoring point is depicted, with spectrin filaments indicated in yellow and connections to the lipid bilayer indicated in orange. The whole complex can be modeled by a vertical spring with a spring constant k. c The model treats the membrane–spectrin connections as springs that are distributed in a hexagonal array. Inhomogeneities are introduced by removing some midpoints of hexagons as indicated in the left panel. The other three arrays show examples of spring distributions for densities of 1096, 257, and 44 springs per µm2 (from left to right)
