Sliding across a surface: Particles with fixed and mobile ligands

Abstract

A quantitative model of the mobility of ligand-presenting particles at the interface is pivotal to understanding important systems in biology and nanotechnology. In this work, we investigate the emerging dynamics of particles featuring ligands that selectively bind receptors decorating an interface. The formation of a ligand-receptor complex leads to a molecular bridge anchoring the particle to the surface. We consider systems with reversible bridges in which ligand-receptor pairs bind/unbind with finite reaction rates. For a given set of bridges, the particle can explore a tiny fraction of the surface as the extensivity of the bridges is finite. We show how, at timescales longer than the bridges' lifetime, the average position of the particle diffuses away from its initial value. We distill our findings into two analytic equations for the sliding diffusion constant of particles carrying mobile and fixed ligands. We quantitatively validate our theoretical predictions using reaction-diffusion simulations. We compare our findings with results from recent literature studies and discuss the molecular parameters that likely affect the particle's mobility most. Our results, along with recent literature studies, will allow inferring the microscopic parameters at play in complex biological systems from experimental trajectories.