Attractive adsorbate interaction in biological surface reactions

Recent studies on ferritin adsorption have revealed strong adsorbate interactions during adsorption (H. Nygren, Biophys. J., 65 (1993) 1508). In the present study, efforts were made to quantify the attractive lateral adsorbate interaction and to describe the effect of such interactions on the time- and concentration dependence of biological surface reactions. Attractive forces between ligands increase the time that they are considered neighbours to other ligands. Thus, the inter-ligand interaction effects their distribution and this can be measured experimentally by the pair correlation function g(r). The attractive lateral interaction was shown to affect the surface adsorption of ferritin, virus particles and bacteria, but played a minor role in the binding of antibodies to surface-immobilised antigen.