Vesicle adhesion reveals novel universal relationships for biophysical characterization

TL;DR

This paper uncovers universal relationships in vesicle adhesion that link measurable physical quantities to adhesion energy, aiding biophysical characterization of biological and biomimetic systems.

Contribution

It introduces simple, universal relationships based on curvature elasticity that connect vesicle adhesion metrics to adhesion energy, validated with experimental data.

Findings

Inverse of vesicle height varies linearly with square root of adhesion energy

Exponential of contact area varies linearly with square root of adhesion energy

Force to detach vesicle varies linearly with square root of adhesion energy

Abstract

Adhesion plays an integral role in diverse biological functions ranging from cellular transport to tissue development. Estimation of adhesion strength, therefore, becomes important to gain biophysical insight into these phenomena. In this Letter, we use curvature elasticity to present non-intuitive, yet remarkably simple, universal relationships that capture vesicle-substrate interactions. Our study reveals that the inverse of the height, exponential of the contact area, and the force required to detach the vesicle from the substrate vary linearly with the square root of the adhesion energy. These relationships not only provide efficient strategies to tease out adhesion energy of biological molecules but can also be used to characterize the physical properties of elastic biomimetic nanoparticles. We validate the modeling predictions with experimental data from two previous studies.