Close contact fluctuations: the seeding of signalling domains in the immunological synapse

Abstract

We analyse the size and density of thermally induced regions of close contact in cell:cell contact interfaces within a harmonic potential approximation, estimating these regions to be below one-tenth of a micron across. Our calculations indicate that as the distance between the close contact threshold depth and the mean membrane-membrane separation increases, the density of close contact patches decreases exponentially while there is only a minimal variation in their mean size. The technique developed can be used to calculate the probability of first crossing in reflection symmetry violating systems.

To be published in Europhysics Letters

References in corpus (1)

• An Effective Membrane Model of the Immunological Synapse

Cited by in corpus (4)

• First-passage time to clear the way for receptor-ligand binding in a crowded environment
• Close Contact Fluctuations: Time of Contact
• Temporal dynamics in immunological synapse: Role of thermal fluctuations in signaling
• Role of fluctuations in membrane models: thermal versus non-thermal