<h3>Title</h3>
<h3>Biophysics of the specific adhesion of nano-sized particles to cell <span style="font-size: 12.16px;">membranes</span></h3>
<p><strong><span style="font-size: 12.16px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Abstract</span> :</span></strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Nano-sized particles such as a virus or an affinity ligand coated nanocarrier gain entry into a cell <span style="font-size: 12.16px;">by first strongly adhering to the target cell membrane. The adhesion proceeds through </span><span style="font-size: 12.16px;">multivalent interactions of ligands on the particle surface with their corresponding cell surface </span><span style="font-size: 12.16px;">receptors. Such binding processes are ubiquitous in cell biology and their study may help in </span><span style="font-size: 12.16px;">furthering our understanding of cellular adhesion. In this talk, I will present a multiscale </span><span style="font-size: 12.16px;">computational framework that accounts for a variety of chemical and physical phenomena that </span><span style="font-size: 12.16px;">govern the binding efficacy of the particles. I will demonstrate how the enthalpy of binding </span><span style="font-size: 12.16px;">together with the loss in the configurational entropies sets an upper limit on the number of </span><span style="font-size: 12.16px;">simultaneous receptor-ligand bonds. I will also show that the surface topography of the cell </span><span style="font-size: 12.16px;">membrane alters this upper limit, and show comparisons of our model predictions with i<em>n vivo </em></span><span style="font-size: 12.16px;">experimental results for five different organs in mouse.</span></p>