Mean first passage times for bond formation for a Brownian particle in linear shear flow above a wall

Abstract

Motivated by cell adhesion in hydrodynamic flow, here we study bond formation between a spherical Brownian particle in linear shear flow carrying receptors for ligands covering the boundary wall. We derive the appropriate Langevin equation which includes multiplicative noise due to position-dependent mobility functions resulting from the Stokes equation. We present a numerical scheme which allows to simulate it with high accuracy for all model parameters, including shear rate and three parameters describing receptor geometry (distance, size and height of the receptor patches). In the case of homogeneous coating, the mean first passage time problem can be solved exactly. In the case of position-resolved receptor-ligand binding, we identify different scaling regimes and discuss their biological relevance.

final version after minor revisions

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Dynamic states of cells adhering in shear flow: from slipping to rolling
• Dynamics of protein-protein encounter: a Langevin equation approach with reaction patches
• Studying protein assembly with reversible Brownian dynamics of patchy particles
• Mean encounter times for cell adhesion in hydrodynamic flow: analytical progress by dimensional reduction