Starter Grant: Dynamic Elasticity Modeling of Protein Diffusion On the Surface of Red Blood Cells

这项研究建立在以前在红细胞表面蛋白质扩散领域的工作基础上。研究人员将开发数值算法，有效地将细胞膜的形状作为时间的函数进行进化。热波动确保了膜的动力学将是随机的，根据初步结果，预计这些波动的幅度将足够大，持续时间将足够长，以解释带3蛋白从红细胞表面的细胞骨架“围栏”中逃逸的原因。这些模拟可能会为早期研究中经验参数的选择提供微观上的理由，或者，可能需要包括细胞骨架的动力学，以实现与实验的一致。无论是哪种情况，研究都将量化细胞膜波动和细胞骨架动力学对蛋白质流动性的相对重要性。开发的算法将用于未来对细胞运动和其他依赖于动态膜波动的生物行为的研究。

The research builds upon previous work in the area of protein diffusion on the surface of erythrocytes. The investigator will develop numerical algorithms to efficiently evolve the shape of the cell membrane as a function of time. Thermal fluctuations insure that the membrane's dynamics will be stochastic and it is anticipated, on the basis of preliminary results, that these fluctuations will be sufficiently large in amplitude and sufficiently long in duration to account for the escape of band 3 protein from the cytoskeletal "corrals "on the surface of the red blood cell. The simulations may provide a microscopic justification for the choice of empirical parameters in earlier studies, or, it may prove necessary to include the dynamics of the cytoskeleton to achieve agreement with experiments. In either eventuality, the investigation will quantify the relative importance of membrane fluctuations and cytoskeletal dynamics on protein mobility. The algorithms developed will be of use in future studies of cell motility and other biological behavior that is dependent upon dynamic membrane fluctuations.