# Coarsening and accelerated equilibration in mass-conserving heterogeneous nucleation

Source: [Coarsening and accelerated equilibration in mass-conserving heterogeneous nucleation](<https://www.sota2.com/research/paper/68fa2ff61e209131ce871016>)

Collection index: [llms.txt](<https://www.sota2.com/research/llms.txt>)

Data updated: 2025-10-24T17:54:30.467Z

Authors: T. Chou, M. D'Orsogna

Published: 2011-10-09T03:14:54.000Z

## Abstract

We propose a model of mass-conserving heterogeneous nucleation to describe the dynamics of ligand-receptor binding in closed cellular compartments. When the ligand dissociation rate is small, competition among receptors for free ligands gives rise to two very different long-time ligand-receptor cluster size distributions. Cluster sizes first plateau to a long-lived, initial-condition dependent, "metastable" distribution, and coarsen only much later to a qualitatively different equilibrium one. Surprisingly, we also find parameters for which a very special subset of clusters have equal metastable and equilibrium sizes, appearing to equilibrate much faster than the rest. Our results provide a quantitative framework for ligand binding kinetics and suggest a mechanism by which different clusters can approach their equilibrium sizes in unexpected ways.

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## Original sources and implementation

[Original paper](<https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1784>)

[PDF](<https://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.1784.pdf>)