The typical red cell makes too little vacuole material for coalescence to build the large vacuoles of pocked cells
Abstract
Red blood cells carrying intracellular vacuoles, called pocked cells, are a sensitive marker of splenic function: about 0.5% of cells in healthy people, 20 to 70% after splenectomy. Vacuoles too small to see are common, and visible ones are thought to grow when small ones merge. We tested that idea with a particle model that resolves the cell's membrane, its contents and every vacuole, and with an inventory of the vacuole volume a cell can make. In tube, shear and vascular flows, a cell's vacuoles met within a second, and, allowed to fuse, ten merged into one to five. Meeting is not what limits growth; material is. At the rate measured after splenectomy, all the vacuoles an average cell makes in its 120-day life fuse into one body 0.6 μm across, the size healthy cells carry, but 16 times smaller in volume than the 1.5-μm bodies of patients without a spleen. Taking vacuole size as set at formation, a population model in which vacuoles are made mainly in young cells, and far faster in a small minority that alone makes material for a large one, accounts for the published counts, sizes and age profiles and, on first-hand measurements, favours a splenic clearance that rises several-fold as cells age; letting that minority's vacuoles fuse fits nearly as well. At a model splenic slit, the cell's spare surface decided passage, and a vacuole mattered only when it led. A slit experiment would test whether brief encounters fuse vacuoles.
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BibTeX
@misc{chai2026typical,
title = {{The typical red cell makes too little vacuole material for coalescence to build the large vacuoles of pocked cells}},
author = {Zhaojie Chai and Jianlu Zheng and He Li and Ming Dao and George Em Karniadakis},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.22646},
eprint = {2610.22646},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.22646},
note = {CC BY-SA 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - The typical red cell makes too little vacuole material for coalescence to build the large vacuoles of pocked cells
AU - Zhaojie Chai
AU - Jianlu Zheng
AU - He Li
AU - Ming Dao
AU - George Em Karniadakis
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/20
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.22646
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.22646
AB - Red blood cells carrying intracellular vacuoles, called pocked cells, are a sensitive marker of splenic function: about 0.5% of cells in healthy people, 20 to 70% after splenectomy. Vacuoles too small to see are common, and visible ones are thought to grow when small ones merge. We tested that idea with a particle model that resolves the cell's membrane, its contents and every vacuole, and with an inventory of the vacuole volume a cell can make. In tube, shear and vascular flows, a cell's vacuoles met within a second, and, allowed to fuse, ten merged into one to five. Meeting is not what limits growth; material is. At the rate measured after splenectomy, all the vacuoles an average cell makes in its 120-day life fuse into one body 0.6 μm across, the size healthy cells carry, but 16 times smaller in volume than the 1.5-μm bodies of patients without a spleen. Taking vacuole size as set at formation, a population model in which vacuoles are made mainly in young cells, and far faster in a small minority that alone makes material for a large one, accounts for the published counts, sizes and age profiles and, on first-hand measurements, favours a splenic clearance that rises several-fold as cells age; letting that minority's vacuoles fuse fits nearly as well. At a model splenic slit, the cell's spare surface decided passage, and a vacuole mattered only when it led. A slit experiment would test whether brief encounters fuse vacuoles.
ER -