2007/10/08 by A. Gamba, I. V. Kolokolov, I. Kolokolov +3 · 1 citation
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Chemistry · Neuroscience · Physics and Astronomy · #Anisotropy #Biology #Biophysics #Chemical physics #Chemistry #Coalescence (physics) #Condensed matter physics #Lipid Membrane Structure and Behavior #Nucleation #Photoreceptor and optogenetics research #Physical chemistry #Physics #Plant and Biological Electrophysiology Studies #Polarization (electrochemistry) #Quantum mechanics #Thermodynamics #cond-mat.stat-mech #physics.bio-ph #q-bio.CB
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.99.158101
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 99 (2007) 158101
openalex publication_date 2007/10/08 · arxiv created 2008/10/30 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Eukaryotic cells possess a sensible chemical compass allowing them to orient toward sources of soluble chemicals. The extracellular chemical signal triggers separation of the cell membrane into two domains populated by different phospholipid molecules and oriented along the signal anisotropy. We propose a theory of this polarization process, which is articulated into subsequent stages of germ nucleation, patch coarsening, and merging into a single domain. We find that the polarization time, tepsilon, depends on the anisotropy degree through the power law tepsilon infinity epsilon-2, and that in a cell of radius R there should exist a threshold value epsilonth infinity R-1 for the smallest detectable anisotropy.