Red blood cells go off the beaten path

A Franco-American team, bringing together researchers from Grenoble (LIPhy and LRP) and the U.S. (Babson College and Olin College, Boston), has demonstrated that in the microcirculatory network, some red blood cells can take unexpected paths to travel from one point to another without necessarily following the shortest route. In a recent study published in Physical Review Fluids, the researchers developed an in vitro experiment in a simple model capillary network, revealing multiple flow solutions between which the system spontaneously oscillates. These observations, supported by theoretical modeling that incorporates the rheology of blood in confined flow, highlight the need to include this intrinsic instability in future models of blood flow in capillary networks.

This work was featured in a CNRS Physics press release and will be presented at the Physical Review Journal Club on December 17, 2024.