Regensburg 2013 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 32: Cell Adhesion and Mechanics

BP 32.7: Talk

Friday, March 15, 2013, 11:00–11:15, H43

Reaction-diffusion binding of a membrane to an underlying scaffold — •Timo Bihr^1,2, Ana-Suncana Smith¹, and Udo Seifert² — ¹Institut für Theoretische Physik and Excellence Cluster: Engineering of Advanced Materials, Universität Erlangen-Nürnber — ²II. Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Stuttgart

Adhesion between cells plays a key role in a number of biological processes. It involves the formation of domains consisting of a large number of ligand-receptor bonds. The dynamics of domain growth has been studied on cells and vesicles over the last two decades, whereby a number of different growth behaviours and a variety of domain morphologies have been characterized. However, a comprehensive theoretical framework accounting for these observations is largely missing. We here develop a coarse-grained, kinetic Monte Carlo scheme that accounts for the discrete and the stochastic nature of the ligand-receptor recognition, the diffusion of binders, and the membrane mediated, long-ranged interactions. Exploring this rich parameter space allowed us to recover all observed types of growth patterns, including the transition from the reaction to the diffusion limited dynamics, as well as the formation of radially growing or fractal patterns as well as ring-shaped domains. Last but not least, we are able to rationalize a number of those regimes by analytic arguments.