Membrane adhesion via competing receptor/ligand bonds

Abstract

The adhesion of biological membranes is controlled by various types of receptor and ligand molecules. In this letter, we present a statistical-mechanical model for membranes that interact via receptor/ligand bonds of two different lengths. We show that the equilibrium phase behavior of the membranes is governed by an effective double-well potential. The depths of the two potential wells depend on the concentrations and binding energies of the receptors and ligands. The membranes are unbound for small, and bound for larger potential depths. In the bound state, the length mismatch of the receptor/ligand bonds can lead to lateral phase separation. We derive explicit scaling laws for the critical points of unbinding and phase separation, and determine the prefactors by comparison with Monte Carlo results.

7 pages, 3 figures; to appear in Europhys. Lett

References in corpus (4)

• Mechanisms of pattern formation during T cell adhesion
• Adhesion of membranes with competing specific and generic interactions
• An Effective Membrane Model of the Immunological Synapse
• Adhesion-induced phase separation of multiple species of membrane junctions

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Adhesion of membranes via receptor-ligand complexes: Domain formation, binding cooperativity, and active processes
• Binding cooperativity of membrane adhesion receptors
• Binding constants of membrane-anchored receptors and ligands: a general theory corroborated by Monte Carlo simulations
• Segregation of receptor-ligand complexes in cell adhesion zones: Phase diagrams and role of thermal membrane roughness
• Binding equilibrium and kinetics of membrane-anchored receptors and ligands in cell adhesion: insights from computational model systems and theory
• Adhesion-induced lateral phase separation of multi-component membranes: the effect of repellers and confinement
• Shear dynamics of confined membranes
• Lateral phase separation of confined membranes