Diffusion-limited attachment of nanoparticles to flexible membrane-immobilized receptors

Journal article, 2016

In biosystems, vesicles, virions, or metal particles of size ∼100 nm often diffuse in solution and interact with short (<10 nm) flexible receptors immobilized in a lipid membrane. The attachment kinetics of such nanoparticles can be limited by diffusion globally or locally. In the latter case, the calculation of the attachment rate is complicated by the dependence of the diffusion coefficient on the distance between a particle and membrane. The analysis, taking this factor into account, shows that the attachment rate constant is proportional to the receptor length and nearly independent of the particle radius.