State Key Laboratory of Nonlinear Mechanics and Beijing Key Laboratory of Engineered Construction and Mechanobiology, Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Kuang Yaming Honors School and Institute for Brain Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China.
Soft Matter. 2021 Feb 21;17(7):1912-1920. doi: 10.1039/d0sm01904f. Epub 2021 Jan 8.
Adhesion of biological cells is mediated by the specific binding of receptors and ligands which are typically large proteins spanning through the plasma membranes of the contacting cells. The receptors and ligands can exhibit affinity for nanoscale lipid clusters that form within the plasma membrane. A central question is how these nanoscale lipid clusters physically affect and respond to the receptor-ligand binding during cell adhesion. Within the framework of classical statistical mechanics we find that the receptor-ligand binding reduces the threshold energy for lipid clusters to coalesce into mesoscale domains by up to ∼50%, and that the formation of these domains induces significant cooperativity of the receptor-ligand binding. The interplay between the receptor-ligand binding cooperativity and the lipid domain formation manifests acute sensitivity of the membrane system to changes in control parameters. This sensitivity can be crucial in cell signaling and immune responses.
生物细胞的黏附是通过受体和配体的特异性结合介导的，这些受体和配体通常是跨越接触细胞的质膜的大型蛋白质。受体和配体可以对质膜内形成的纳米级脂质簇表现出亲和力。一个核心问题是这些纳米级脂质簇如何在细胞黏附过程中物理影响和响应受体-配体结合。在经典统计力学的框架内，我们发现受体-配体结合将脂质簇合并成介观域的阈值能量降低了多达约 50%，并且这些域的形成诱导了受体-配体结合的显著协同作用。受体-配体结合协同作用和脂质域形成之间的相互作用表现出膜系统对控制参数变化的急性敏感性。这种敏感性在细胞信号转导和免疫反应中可能是至关重要的。
