Related papers: Bidirectional allostery mechanism of catch-bond ef…
Mechanical forces acting on cell adhesion receptor proteins regulate a range of cellular functions by formation and rupture of non-covalent interactions with ligands. Typically, force decreases the lifetimes of intact complexes…
Bistability is a major mechanism for cellular decision making and usually results from positive feedback in biochemical control systems. Here we show theoretically that bistability between unbound and bound states of adhesion clusters…
Cell membranes interact via anchored receptor and ligand molecules. Central questions on cell adhesion concern the binding affinity of these membrane-anchored molecules, the mechanisms leading to the receptor-ligand domains observed during…
Understanding cellular response to mechanical forces is immensely important for a plethora of biological processes. Focal adhesions are multi-molecular protein assemblies that connect the cell to the extracellular matrix and play a pivotal…
A quantitative understanding of how cells interact with their extracellular matrix via molecular bonds is fundamental for many important processes in cell biology and engineering. In these interactions, the deformability of cells and matrix…
Mechanical loading generally weakens adhesive structures and eventually leads to their rupture. However, biological systems can adapt to loads by strengthening adhesions, which is essential for maintaining the integrity of tissue and whole…
The adhesion of cell membranes is mediated by the binding of membrane-anchored receptor and ligand proteins. In this article, we review recent results from simulations and theory that lead to novel insights on how the binding equilibrium…
Lifetimes of bound states of protein complexes or biomolecule folded states typically decrease when subject to mechanical force. However, a plethora of biological systems exhibit the counter-intuitive phenomenon of catch bonding, where…
Mechanical force regulates the formation and growth of cell-cell junctions. Cadherin is a prominent homotypic cell adhesion molecule that plays a crucial role in establishment of intercellular adhesion. It is known that the transmitted…
Mechanical cues like the rigidity of the substrate are main determinants for the decision making of adherent cells. Here we use a mechano-chemical model to predict the cellular response to varying substrate stiffness. The model equations…
Catch bonds are interactions whose lifetimes increase under mechanical load, a counterintuitive behaviour that underlies diverse biological processes. Translating this mechanism to synthetic materials offers the potential to create systems…
Biological adhesion is a critical mechanical function of complex organisms operating at multiple scales. At the cellular scale, cell-cell adhesion is remarkably tunable to enable both cohesion and malleability during development,…
A model system has been recently developed to study adhesion. It consists of a giant lipid bilayer vesicle with reconstituted lipo-polymers (repellers) as well as with lipo-ligands recognized by receptors covering the substrate. Adhesion in…
Cell migration plays a fundamental role in numerous physiological processes, including embryonic development, wound healing, and cancer metastasis. While cell-cell adhesion is known to regulate motion by shaping cell morphology and…
Adhesion processes of biological membranes that enclose cells and cellular organelles are essential for immune responses, tissue formation, and signaling. These processes depend sensitively on the binding constant K2D of the…
Applying a force to certain supramolecular bonds may initially stabilize them, manifested by a lower dissociation rate. We show that this behavior, known as catch bonding and by now broadly reported in numerous biophysics bonds, is…
We develop a stochastic kinetic model of a pre-formed attachment of a mictrotuble (MT) with a cell cortex, in which the MT is tethered to the cell by a group of active motor proteins. Such an attachment is a particularly unique case of…
The adhesion of biological membranes is mediated by the binding of membrane-anchored receptor and ligand proteins. Central questions are how the binding kinetics of these proteins is affected by the membranes and by the membrane anchoring…
In this study, we propose a theory of rough adhesive contact of viscoelastic materials in steady-state sliding. By exploiting a boundary formulation based on Green function approach, the unknown contact domain is calculated by enforcing the…
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.…