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Living cells are capable of interacting with their environments in a varietyof ways, including cell signalling, adhesion, and directed motion. Thesebehaviours are often mediated by receptor molecules embedded in the cellmembrane, which bind specific ligands. Adhesion mediated by a large number ofweakly binding moieties - multivalent binding - is prevalent in a range ofactive cellular processes, such as cell crawling and pathogen-host invasion. Inthese circumstances, motion is often caused by gradients in ligand density,which constitutes a simple example of chemotaxis. To unravel the biophysics ofchemotactic multivalent adhesion, we have designed an experimental system inwhich artificial cell models based on lipid vesicles adhere to a substratethrough multivalent interactions, and perform chemotactic motion towards higherligand concentrations. Adhesion occurs via vesicle-anchored receptors andsubstrate-anchored ligands, both consisting of synthetic DNA linkers that allowprecise control over binding strength. Experimental data, rationalised throughnumerical and theoretical models, reveal that motion directionality iscorrelated to both binding strength and vesicle size. Besides providinginsights into the biophysics of chemotactic multivalent adhesion, our resultshighlight design rules applicable to the development of biomimetic motilesystems for synthetic biology and therapeutic applications.

Chemotactic crawling of multivalent vesicles along ligand-density gradients