Stability of adhesion clusters under constant force

TL;DR

This paper models the stochastic behavior of adhesion clusters under constant force, revealing how rebinding strength influences cluster lifetime and decay dynamics, with implications for cellular signaling.

Contribution

It provides a mathematical analysis of adhesion cluster stability under force, highlighting the importance of rebinding in determining lifetime and decay behavior.

Findings

Cluster lifetime grows logarithmically with bond number at weak rebinding.

Strong rebinding leads to exponential increase in cluster lifetime.

Small increases in force can cause rapid decay in intermediate regimes.

Abstract

We solve the stochastic equations for a cluster of parallel bonds with shared constant loading, rebinding and the completely dissociated state as an absorbing boundary. In the small force regime, cluster lifetime grows only logarithmically with bond number for weak rebinding, but exponentially for strong rebinding. Therefore rebinding is essential to ensure physiological lifetimes. The number of bonds decays exponentially with time for most cases, but in the intermediate force regime, a small increase in loading can lead to much faster decay. This effect might be used by cell-matrix adhesions to induce signaling events through cytoskeletal loading.