Regensburg 2019 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 6: Poster I

BP 6.69: Poster

Montag, 1. April 2019, 17:30–19:30, Poster B2

External forces on the cell membrane — •Kristian Blom and Aljaz Godec — Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Mathematical Biophysics Group, Göttingen, Germany

Cell adhesion is the process by which neighboring cells attach to each other through specialized adhesion molecules on the cell surface. The formation of receptor-ligand bond clusters between two cell surfaces is essential for cellular regulation, intercellular communication, immune response, tissue formation, and cell signaling.

While most of our current understanding about adhesion dynamics derives from the theory of non-interacting receptor-ligand bonds, recent experiments have revealed striking collective properties of adhesion clusters arising from a coupling of nearby individual adhesion bonds through deformations of the fluctuating membrane. However, how exactly this coupling affects the dynamics of cluster formation and dissolution remains an elusive problem.

In order to arrive at a deeper understanding of adhesion cluster dynamics under an external force we incorporated both the coupling of adhesion bonds due to membrane fluctuations as well as an external force into a theory of adhesion cluster stability. We obtained rigorous results for the depinning time statistics, i.e. the time to the state in which all N adhesion bonds become detached. The interplay between the pulling force and the inter-bond coupling yields non-trivial effects on the depinning time.