THE INFLUENCE OF THERMAL UNDULATIONS ON THE STABILITY OF ADHESION OF A BIOLOGICAL MEMBRANE

摘要

The model introduced here has been examined in order to gain some understanding of the competition between thermal fluctuations and stability of individual bonds in cell adhesion. Analysis of the model shows that the connection can be fairly strong, with the bond being unstable if the spacing of bond sites is greater than some critical value. A representative result is illustrated in Figure 3 for a single bond within a square patch of membrane which is subjected to periodic boundary conditions. The implication of the boundary conditions is that the patch is surrounded by identical patches, each with a single centrally located bond site.