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Updated: May 26, 2026

Adhesion Frequency Assay for In Situ Kinetics Analysis of Cross-Junctional Molecular Interactions at the Cell-Cell Interface
Published on: November 2, 2011
Entropic attraction of adhesion bonds toward cell boundaries
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva 84105, Israel.
Abstract:
Adhesion bonds between membranes and surfaces are attracted to each other via effective interactions whose origin is 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 decays algebraically with the distance from the boundaries. Upon increasing the concentration of the adhesion bonds, the attraction to the boundaries becomes strongly self-screened.
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