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Science 20 July 2001:
Vol. 293. no. 5529, pp. 465 - 468
DOI: 10.1126/science.293.5529.465
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Reports

Impact of Polymer Tether Length on Multiple Ligand-Receptor Bond Formation

Claus Jeppesen,1 Joyce Y. Wong,3 Tonya L. Kuhl,4 Jacob N. Israelachvili,12 Nasreen Mullah,5 Samuel Zalipsky,5 Carlos M. Marques6*

The promoters of cell adhesion are ligands, which are often attached to flexible tethers that bind to surface receptors on adjacent cells. Using a combination of Monte Carlo simulations, diffusion reaction theory, and direct experiments (surface force measurements) of the biotin-streptavidin system, we have quantified polymer chain dynamics and the kinetics and spatial range of tethered ligand-receptor binding. The results show that the efficiency of strong binding does not depend solely on the molecular architecture or binding energy of the receptor-ligand pair, nor on the equilibrium configuration of the polymer tether, but rather on its "rare" extended conformations.

1 Materials Research Laboratory,
2 Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA.
3 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, 44 Cummington Street, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
4 Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of California, 1 Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA.
5 ALZA Corporation, 1900 Charleston Road, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.
6 LDFC-Institut de Physique, 3 rue de l'Université, 67084 Strasbourg Cedex, France.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed.

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