Vesicle adhesion reveals novel universal relationships for biophysical characterization

Adhesion plays an integral role in diverse biological functions ranging from cellular transport to tissue development. Estimation of adhesion strength, therefore, becomes important to gain biophysical insight into these phenomena. In this study, we use curvature elasticity to present non-intuitive, yet remarkably simple, universal relationships that capture vesicle–substrate interactions. These relationships not only provide efficient strategies to tease out adhesion energy of biological molecules but can also be used to characterize the physical properties of elastic biomimetic nanoparticles. We validate the modeling predictions with experimental data from two previous studies.