Influence of external vibration on tether chain in ligand-receptor binding

Abstract

The tethered ligand-receptor binding is an important biological phenomenon. The conformation of tether chain greatly affects the binding process. By using molecular dynamics, the influence of environmental vibration on the conformation of the tether chain is studied. The phase diagram shows that the radius of gyration of the tether chain becomes large when there is vibration due to the vibrational disturbance. However, when the vibration frequency is high enough, the average value of radius of gyration will reduce. Under high frequency vibration, the chain has an inerratic variation on its radius of gyration. These properties provide the frequency modulation on the dimension of the chain. The scaling relation proves the dimension of chain increases faster under low frequency vibration. There are also weak resonance and stochastic-resonance-like behaviors in the chain system. These behaviors probably have biological importance.