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Updated: Jun 8, 2026

Adhesion Frequency Assay for In Situ Kinetics Analysis of Cross-Junctional Molecular Interactions at the Cell-Cell Interface
Published on: November 2, 2011
Fluctuation-induced attraction between adhesion sites of supported membranes
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Ben Gurion University, Be'er Sheva 84105, Israel.
Abstract:
We use scaling arguments and coarse-grained Monte Carlo simulations to study the fluctuation-mediated interactions between a pair of adhesion sites of a bilayer membrane and a supporting surface. We find that the potential of mean force is an infinitely long range attractive potential that grows logarithmically with the pair distance r : ϕ(r)/k B T=c ln r, where the constant c=2 and c=1 for nonstressed and stressed membranes, respectively. When, in addition to excluded volume repulsion, the membrane also interacts with the underlying surface through a height-dependent attractive potential, the potential ϕ(r) is screened at large pair distances.
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