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Updated: Dec 24, 2025

Pulling Membrane Nanotubes from Giant Unilamellar Vesicles
Published on: December 7, 2017
Physical understanding of the bending of nanostructures caused by cellular force
1MOE Key Laboratory of Laser Life Science and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Laser Life Science, College of Biophotonics, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China.
Abstract:
The bending of nanostructures (NSs), such as nanopillars and nanowires, caused by cell adhesion is an interesting phenomenon and is important for the measurements of cellular forces, understanding the biological behavior of cells, and disease diagnosis. However, which factors are related to the bending of NSs and how the factors affect bending displacement are still not well understood. Here, we establish an analytic thermodynamic theory to study the bending mechanism of NSs caused by cellular force during the cell adhesion process, and analyze the factors affecting bending displacement. It is found that the bending of NSs is determined by the competition between the stretching energy of the membrane and the strain energy of the NSs. The bending displacement can be evaluated based on our model.
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