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Register a new userPredicting optimal hematocrit in silico
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Optimal hematocrit $H_o$ maximizes oxygen transport. In healthy humans, the average hematocrit $H$ is in the range of 40-45$%$, but it can significantly change in blood pathologies such as severe anemia (low $H$) and polycythemia (high $H$). Whether the hematocrit level in humans corresponds to the optimal one is a long standing physiological question. Here, using numerical simulations with the Lattice Boltzmann method and two mechanical models of the red blood cell (RBC) we predict the optimal hematocrit, and explore how altering the mechanical properties of RBCs affects $H_o$. We develop a simplified analytical theory that accounts for results obtained from numerical simulations and provides insight into the physical mechanisms determining $H_o$. Our numerical and analytical models can easily be modified to incorporate a wide range of mechanical properties of RBCs as well as other soft particles thereby providing means for the rational design of blood substitutes. Our work lays the foundations for systematic theoretical study of the optimal hematocrit and its link with pathological RBCs associated with various diseases (e.g. sickle cell anemia, diabetes mellitus, malaria, elliptocytosis).
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It is widely believed that the swimming speed, $v$, of many flagellated bacteria is a non-monotonic function of the concentration, $c$, of high-molecular-weight linear polymers in aqueous solution, showing peaked $v(c)$ curves. Pores in the polymer solution were suggested as the explanation. Quantifying this picture led to a theory that predicted peaked $v(c)$ curves. Using new, high-throughput methods for characterising motility, we have measured $v$, and the angular frequency of cell-body rotation, $Omega$, of motile Escherichia coli as a function of polymer concentration in polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and Ficoll solutions of different molecular weights. We find that non-monotonic $v(c)$ curves are typically due to low-molecular weight impurities. After purification by dialysis, the measured $v(c)$ and $Omega(c)$ relations for all but the highest molecular weight PVP can be described in detail by Newtonian hydrodynamics. There is clear evidence for non-Newtonian effects in the highest molecular weight PVP solution. Calculations suggest that this is due to the fast-rotating flagella `seeing a lower viscosity than the cell body, so that flagella can be seen as nano-rheometers for probing the non-Newtonian behavior of high polymer solutions on a molecular scale.
Soft bodies flowing in a channel often exhibit parachute-like shapes usually attributed to an increase of hydrodynamic constraint (viscous stress and/or confinement). We show that the presence of a fluid membrane leads to the reverse phenomenon and build a phase diagram of shapes --- which are classified as bullet, croissant and parachute --- in channels of varying aspect ratio. Unexpectedly, shapes are relatively wider in the narrowest direction of the channel. We highlight the role of flow patterns on the membrane in this response to the asymmetry of stress distribution.
Tracer particles immersed in suspensions of biological microswimmers such as E. coli or Chlamydomonas display phenomena unseen in conventional equilibrium systems, including strongly enhanced diffusivity relative to the Brownian value and non-Gaussian displacement statistics. In dilute, 3-dimensional suspensions, these phenomena have typically been explained by the hydrodynamic advection of point tracers by isolated microswimmers, while, at higher concentrations, correlations between pusher microswimmers such as E. coli can increase the effective diffusivity even further. Anisotropic tracers in active suspensions can be expected to exhibit even more complex behaviour than spherical ones, due to the presence of a nontrivial translation-rotation coupling. Using large-scale lattice Boltzmann simulations of model microswimmers described by extended force dipoles, we study the motion of ellipsoidal point tracers immersed in 3-dimensional microswimmer suspensions. We find that the rotational diffusivity of tracers is much less affected by swimmer-swimmer correlations than the translational diffusivity. We furthermore study the anisotropic translational diffusion in the particle frame and find that, in pusher suspensions, the diffusivity along the ellipsoid major axis is higher than in the direction perpendicular to it, albeit with a smaller ratio than for Brownian diffusion. Thus, we find that far field hydrodynamics cannot account for the anomalous coupling between translation and rotation observed in experiments, as was recently proposed. Finally, we study the probability distributions (PDFs) of translational and rotational displacements. In accordance with experimental observations, for short observation times we observe strongly non-Gaussian PDFs that collapse when rescaled with their variance, which we attribute to the ballistic nature of tracer motion at short times.
Complex interactions between cellular systems and their surrounding extracellular matrices are emerging as important mechanical regulators of cell functions such as proliferation, motility, and cell death, and such cellular systems are often characterized by pulsating acto-myosin activities. Here, using an active gel model, we numerically explore the spontaneous flow generation by activity pulses in the presence of a viscoelastic medium. The results show that cross-talk between the activity-induced deformations of the viscoelastic surroundings with the time-dependent response of the active medium to these deformations can lead to the reversal of spontaneously generated active flows. We explain the mechanism behind this phenomenon based on the interaction between the active flow and the viscoelastic medium. We show the importance of relaxation timescales of both the polymers and the active particles and provide a phase-space over which such spontaneous flow reversals can be observed. Our results suggest new experiments investigating the role of controlled pulses of activity in living systems ensnared in complex mircoenvironments.
A system of ferromagnetic particles trapped at a liquid-liquid interface and subjected to a set of magnetic fields (magnetocapillary swimmers) is studied numerically using a hybrid method combining the pseudopotential lattice Boltzmann method and the discrete element method. After investigating the equilibrium properties of a single, two and three particles at the interface, we demonstrate a controlled motion of the swimmer formed by three particles. It shows a sharp dependence of the average center-of-mass speed on the frequency of the time-dependent external magnetic field. Inspired by experiments on magnetocapillary microswimmers, we interpret the obtained maxima of the swimmer speed by the optimal frequency centered around the characteristic relaxation time of a spherical particle. It is also shown that the frequency corresponding to the maximum speed grows and the maximum average speed decreases with increasing inter-particle distances at moderate swimmer sizes. The findings of our lattice Boltzmann simulations are supported by bead-spring model calculations.
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