A bio-inspired method for direct measurement of local wall shear rates with micrometer localization using the multimeric protein von Willebrand factor as sensor molecule.

Wall shear rates are critical for a broad variety of fluidic phenomena and are taken into account in nearly every experimental or simulation study. Generally, shear rates are not observable directly but rather derived from other parameters such as pressure and flow, often assuming somehow idealized systems. However, there is a biological system which is able to constantly measure the wall shear as a part of a regulatory circuit: The blood circulation system takes advantage of shear rate sensor (protein)molecules (multimeric forms of von Willebrand Factor, VWF), which are dissolved in the blood plasma and dramatically change their conformation under shear conditions. The conformational changes are accompanied by several functional variations and therefore interplay with the regulation of the coagulation system. In this study, we use a recombinantly produced and therefore well-defined multimeric form of VWF as a sensor which directly responds to shear rates. Shear rates, up to 32.000 s, were obtained using a kind of micro-plate-to-plate rheometer capable of adsorbing shear-stretched VWF oligomeric molecules on a surface to conserve their differently stretched conformation and so allow detection of their elongation by atomic force microscopy. The laminar flow in this geometrically simple device has been characterized by adopting classical fluid dynamical models, in order to ensure well-known, stable shear rates which could be correlated quantitatively with an observed stretching of sensor molecules.