Yunfeng Chen^1,2,3,†,*, Jiexi Liao^4,†, Zhou Yuan¹, Kaitao Li⁴, Baoyu Liu⁴, Lining Arnold Ju^4,5,6, Cheng Zhu^1,2,4,*

Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, Vol.16, No.3, pp. 211-223, 2019, DOI:10.32604/mcb.2019.07267

Abstract Force plays critical roles in cell adhesion and mechano-signaling, partially by regulating the dissociation rate, i.e., off-rate, of receptor-ligand bonds. However, the mechanism of such regulation still remains elusive. As a controversial topic of the field, when measuring the “off-rate vs. force” relation of the same molecular system, different dynamic force spectroscopy (DFS) assays (namely, force-clamp and force-ramp assays) often yield contradictive results. Such discrepancies hurdled our further understanding of molecular binding, and casted doubt on the existing theoretical models. In this work, we used a live-cell DFS technique, biomembrane force probe, to measure the single-bond dissociation in three receptor-ligand… More >

Vedula S.R.K.^*, Lim T.S.^†, Hunziker W.^‡, Lim C.T.^§

Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, Vol.5, No.3, pp. 169-182, 2008, DOI:10.3970/mcb.2008.005.169

Abstract Intercellular adhesion molecules play an important role in regulating several cellular processes such as a proliferation, migration and differentiation. They also play an important role in regulating solute diffusion across monolayers of cells. The adhesion characteristics of several intercellular adhesion molecules have been studied using various biochemical assays. However, the advent of single molecule force spectroscopy as a powerful tool to analyze the kinetics and strength of protein interactions has provided us with an opportunity to investigate these interactions at the level of a single molecule. The study of interactions involving intercellular adhesion molecules has gained importance because of the… More >

S.R.K. Vedula¹, T.S. Lim², P.J. Kausalya³, W. Hunziker³, G. Rajagopal², C.T. Lim^1,4

Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, Vol.2, No.3, pp. 105-124, 2005, DOI:10.3970/mcb.2005.002.105

Abstract Cell-cell adhesion is an extremely important phenomenon as it influences several biologically important processes such as inflammation, cell migration, proliferation, differentiation and even cancer metastasis. Furthermore, proteins involved in cell-cell adhesion are also important from the perspective of facilitating better drug delivery across epithelia. The adhesion forces imparted by proteins involved in cell-cell adhesion have been the focus of research for sometime. However, with the advent of nanotechnological techniques such as the atomic force microscopy (AFM), we can now quantitatively probe these adhesion forces not only at the cellular but also molecular level. Here, we review the structure and function… More >