Physical Basis of Cell-Cell Adhesion

Book excerpt: The Present book is aimed at providing a readable account of physical methods and results required to measure cell adhesion and interpret experimental data. Since on the one hand readability seemed a major quality for a book, and on the other hand, the problems posed referred to a wide range of domains of physics, chemistry, and biology, completeness had to sacrificed. Indeed, a whole book would not suffice to quote the relevant literature (and many more authors would be required to have read it). Hence, only a limited number of topics were selected for reliability of methods, availability of enough experimental results to illustrate basic conception or potential use in the future. These were discussed in three sections.