A possible mechanism determining the stability of spiculated red blood cells

In this work the stability of spiculated red blood cells, called echinocytes, is studied. It is assumed that the stable echinocyte shape corresponds to the minimum of its membrane elastic energy. It is shown that if the membrane skeleton shear elasticity is not taken into account the calculated stable echinocyte shapes always have only one spicule. However, by considering the skeleton shear elastic energy also, the calculated stable echinocyte shapes have many spicula in agreement with experimental observations.