A triangulated surface model of an African trypanosome.

<p><i>(A)</i> The elongated cell body is modeled through a net of vertices connected by springs and an additional bending rigidity (for details see <a href="http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.ppat.1003023#s4" target="_blank">Materials and Methods</a> section). (<i>B</i>) (a) Side view of the trypanosome model. (b) The dotted line shown in (a) discretized into vertices along which the bending potential is applied, (c) shows how the tangent vectors t<i>_i</i>, t<i>_i</i>₊₁ and the angle <i>θ</i> are defined using the discretized vertices. (<i>C</i>) The trypanosome surface model at the beginning of the simulation with the helical flagellum indicated as the blue colored line. (<i>D</i>) Average flow field of the model trypanosome swimming as obtained from simulation with multi-particle collision dynamics.