Figure 3.

Hypothesis on fluctuation force-driven clustering. Thermally excited fluctuations are suppressed by membrane inclusions (yellow) of nanometric size like STxB, not only at the sites of binding to the membrane, but also for the membrane patch between the two nanoparticles, if they are separated only by a distance of their own size. This perturbation results in an attractive force whose strength is expected to be similar to that of shielded electrostatics or van der Waals interactions. Reproduced with permission from Toxins, Ref. [24].