Instruct: Identify the main and secondary category of Arxiv papers based on the titles and abstracts
Query: Stiffening of Red Blood Cells Induced by Disordered Cytoskeleton
  Structures: A Joint Theory-experiment Study   The functions and elasticities of the cell are largely related to the
structures of the cytoskeletons underlying the lipid bi-layer. Among various
cell types, the Red Blood Cell (RBC) possesses a relatively simple cytoskeletal
structure. Underneath the membrane, the RBC cytoskeleton takes the form of a
two dimensional triangular network, consisting of nodes of actins (and other
proteins) and edges of spectrins. Recent experiments focusing on the malaria
infected RBCs (iRBCs) showed that there is a correlation between the elongation
of spectrins in the cytoskeletal network and the stiffening of the iRBCs. Here
we rationalize the correlation between these two observations by combining the
worm-like chain (WLC) model for single spectrins and the Effective Medium
Theory (EMT) for the network elasticity. We specifically focus on how the
disorders in the cytoskeletal network affect its macroscopic elasticity.
Analytical and numerical solutions from our model reveal that the stiffness of
the membrane increases with increasing end-to-end distances of spectrins, but
has a non-monotonic dependence on the variance of the end-to-end distance
distributions. These predictions are verified quantitively by our AFM and
micropipette aspiration measurements of iRBCs. The model may, from a molecular
level, provide guidelines for future identification of new treatment methods
for RBC related diseases, such as malaria infection.

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The categories of this paper are: adap-org
1
The categories of this paper are: cs
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The categories of this paper are: bayes-an
13
The categories of this paper are: quant-ph
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The categories of this paper are: q-fin
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The categories of this paper are: nucl-ex
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The categories of this paper are: hep-lat
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The categories of this paper are: acc-phys
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The categories of this paper are: chao-dyn
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The categories of this paper are: nucl-th
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The categories of this paper are: atom-ph
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The categories of this paper are: funct-an
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The categories of this paper are: gr-qc
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The categories of this paper are: hep-th
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The categories of this paper are: dg-ga
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The categories of this paper are: stat