Adhesive contact between cylindrical (Ebola) and spherical (SARS-CoV-2) viral particles and a cell membrane
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Adhesive contact between cylindrical (Ebola) and spherical (SARS-CoV-2) viral particles and a cell membrane Jiajun Wang 1 & Nicole Lapinski 2 & Xiaohui Zhang 1,3 & Anand Jagota 1,2 Received: 25 June 2020 / Accepted: 22 July 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract A critical event during the process of cell infection by a viral particle is attachment, which is driven by adhesive interactions and resisted by bending and tension. The biophysics of this process has been studied extensively, but the additional role of externally applied force or displacement has generally been neglected. In this work, we study the adhesive force-displacement response of viral particles against a cell membrane. We have built two models: one in which the viral particle is cylindrical (say, representative of a filamentous virus such as Ebola) and another in which it is spherical (such as SARS-CoV-2 and Zika). Our interest is in initial adhesion, in which case deformations are small, and the mathematical model for the system can be simplified considerably. The parameters that characterize the process combine into two dimensionless groups that represent normalized membrane bending stiffness and tension. In the limit where bending dominates, for sufficiently large values of normalized bending stiffness, there is no adhesion between viral particles and the cell membrane without applied force. (The zero external force contact width and pull-off force are both zero.) For large values of normalized membrane tension, the adhesion between virus and cell membrane is weak but stable. (The contact width at zero external force has a small value.) Our results for pull-off force and zero force contact width help to quantify conditions that could aid the development of therapies based on denying the virus entry into the cell by blocking its initial adhesion. Keywords Virus-cell adhesion . Membrane bending . Membrane tension . Virus-membrane contact mechanics
1 Introduction Viral infection is one of the major public health issues in the world. From one of the most lethal viruses, Ebola virus, to the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) causing the present pandemic, countless people have died and been sickened from virus infection and complications. Moreover, this is an ongoing concern because there will always be new viruses or mutated ones. It is therefore important to develop an understanding of how virus particles infect our body’s cells. One of the vital moments during infection is the internalization of the virus particle, often by hijacking the normal physiological adhesive function of the receptors on the surface of the cell membrane. Uptake of most virus particles into a host cell is mediated by the receptor-dependent adhesive interaction between cell-surface and virus-surface molecules [1–3]. This initiates endocytosis, which comprises physiochemical interactions between the virus particle and cell membrane and several kinetic processes. During this process, the adhesive forces tend to bend and pull against tension to wrap
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