Entropic attraction of adhesion bonds toward cell boundaries

Abstract

Adhesion bonds between membranes and surfaces are attracted to each other via effective interactions whose origin the entropy loss due to the reduction in the amplitude of the membrane thermal fluctuations in the vicinity of the adhesion bonds. These fluctuation-induced interactions are also expected to drive the adhesion bonds toward the rim of the cell, as well as toward the surfaces of membrane inclusions. In this paper, we analyze the attraction of adhesion bonds to the cell inner and outer boundaries. Our analysis shows that the probability distribution function of a single (diffusing) adhesion bond decay algebraically with the distance from the boundaries. Upon increasing the concentration of the adhesion bonds, the attraction to the boundaries becomes strongly self-screened.

Entropy-driven aggregation in multilamellar membranes

“…On the other hand, the latter depletion-like interactions may play a role in biomembranes and this type of domain formation can be induced not only in adhesion anchor proteins but also in other membrane-associated proteins. It is reported that the adhesion sites are accumulated on fixed membrane boundary [11]. The adhesion sites and other proteins can likely form a domain at a specific region in a plasma membrane via interactions with the cytoskeleton.…”

“…Several groups have been investigated this entropic interaction theoretically [7,[9][10][11][12] and via simulations [8,9]. These studies have reported a weak attraction between adhesion sites, which induces small temporal clusters.…”

“…It is mediated by specific (ligand-receptor) and non-specific interactions. Recently, lateral interactions between ligand-receptor adhesion sites in membranes have been received growing attention [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. The cooperative aggregation of the adhesion sites yields various patterns of adhesion domains and also morphological changes in cells and liposomes.…”

“…Currently, entropic interactions between (permanently bonded) ligand-receptor sites is a topic of active discussion [7][8][9][10][11][12]. The membrane height fluctuations yield a repulsive force f ∼ d −3 between tensionless fluid membranes with a neighboring membrane distance d [14].…”

Conformal field theory of critical Casimir interactions in 2D

“…There is extensive literature on this topic, and the interested reader can consult recent publications [18,19]. Yet another entropic force is proposed to act between surface-membrane bio-adhesion bonds [20].…”