TY - JOUR T1 - ELEMENT-FREE MULTISCALE MODELING OF LARGE DEFORMATION BEHAVIOR OF RED BLOOD CELL MEMBRANE WITH MALARIA INFECTION JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/136648 SP - 136648 AU - A.S. Ademiloye AU - L.W. Zhang AU - K.M. Liew Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/05/11/136648.abstract N2 - In normal physiological and healthy conditions, red blood cells (RBCs) deform readily as they pass through the microcapillaries and the spleen. In this paper, we examine the effects of Plasmodium falciparum infection and maturation on the large deformation behavior of malaria-infected red blood cells (iRBCs) by means of a three-dimensional (3D) multiscale meshfree method. We numerically simulated the optical tweezers experiment and observed the force-displacement response of the iRBC membrane as malaria infection progresses. Our simulation results agree well with experimental data and confirm that the deformability of malaria-infected cells decreases significantly as malaria infection progresses. ER -