Abstract
In this study, we have measured deformability of malaria parasite-infected human red blood cells (RBCs) using dielectrophoresis (DEP) to elucidate the relation between the cell deformability and the infection stage depending on the different strains of malaria parasite. Severe malaria is still a major infectious disease caused by a protozoan parasite Plasmodium falciparum in tropical and subtropical regions in the world. Malaria parasite invades RBC and proliferate within RBC. It is documented in previous research that the membrane of P. falciparum-infected RBCs becomes indurated. However, the mechanism of this phenomenon remains to be elucidated. Here, we propose on-chip method for a tensile testing of RBC that is able to quantify mechanical proportion and can be used to evaluate the parasite's gene function in combination with the genetic engineering techniques for this parasite. We found that the dielectrophoretic deformation of the host RBCs showed different tendency depending on the parasite-strains. Moreover, we were able to estimate Young's modulus of the infected RBCs from the result of the tensile test. These results indicate that the developed method for the detection of RBCs infected by malaria parasite, but also in future association studies between the mechanical property of the parasite-infected RBCs and malaria pathogenesis.
