Vesicles, capsules and red blood cells under flow

Blood flow is dictated by the dynamics of red blood cells (RBCs), which constitute by far the major component. RBCs are made of a a two dimensional fluid bilayer of phospholipids, having underneath a network of proteins conferring to them shear elasticity, and they possess many membrane and transmembrane proteins (like ion channels). Simplified systems, like vesicles (made of a pure bilayer of phospholipid) and capsules (made of an extensible polymer shell) are used as models for RBCs. Both systems reproduce several features known for RBCs under flow. Their interest lies, besides some simplicity, in the fact that they can be fabricated in the laboratory, and their properties (size, stiffness, internal content....) can be varied in a wide range allowing thus to explore a quite significant parameter space that is essential to test predictions and discriminate between different models. We shall review the main recent achievement in this field, both for a single entity, collective effects and the impact on rheology.