The Effect of Thermal Fluctuation on the Receptor-Mediated Adhesion of a Cell Membrane to an Elastic Substrate
by
Bahador Marzban and Hongyan Yuan *
Bahador Marzban and Hongyan Yuan *
Department of Mechanical, Industrial & Systems Engineering, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI 02881, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Shiro Suetsugu
Membranes 2017, 7(2), 24; https://doi.org/10.3390/membranes7020024
Received: 14 February 2017 / Revised: 14 April 2017 / Accepted: 25 April 2017 / Published: 27 April 2017
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Feature Papers)
Mechanics of the bilayer membrane play an important role in many biological and bioengineering problems such as cell–substrate and cell–nanomaterial interactions. In this work, we study the effect of thermal fluctuation and the substrate elasticity on the cell membrane–substrate adhesion. We model the adhesion of a fluctuating membrane on an elastic substrate as a two-step reaction comprised of the out-of-plane membrane fluctuation and the receptor–ligand binding. The equilibrium closed bond ratio as a function of substrate rigidity was computed by developing a coupled Fourier space Brownian dynamics and Monte Carlo method. The simulation results show that there exists a crossover value of the substrate rigidity at which the closed bond ratio is maximal.
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Keywords:
cell membrane; fluctuation; Brownian dynamics; Fourier transform; Monte Carlo
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MDPI and ACS Style
Marzban, B.; Yuan, H. The Effect of Thermal Fluctuation on the Receptor-Mediated Adhesion of a Cell Membrane to an Elastic Substrate. Membranes 2017, 7, 24.
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