Fig. 4

Differences in the nanotopography can induce specific adhesion dynamics that strongly depend on the glycocalyx configuration. The panel shows the results of the adhesion force spectroscopy measurements for probes with flat-zirconia films devoid of nanotopographical features (flat-Zr, blue lines or bars), and with nanostructured cluster-assembled zirconia films with a roughness R_q of 15 nm (ns-Zr15, red lines or bars), or 20 nm (ns-Zr20, black lines or black/grey bars), in the presence of the cell’s native glycocalyx (solid lines or bars), or after glycocalyx reduction by enzymatic digestion (dashed lines or bars with border lines). The measurements were taken at 5 different cell-probe contact times (0 s, 20 s, 60 s, 120 s, and 240 s). The parameters presented in this graph are A Maximum adhesion force F_a, B Number of jump bonds N_j, and C Mean strength of jump bonds < F_j > (Work W and Number of tether bonds N_t can be found in Additional file 1: SI – SI Fig. S6). The error bars represent the effective standard deviation of the mean details in 4.3.4). Asterisks indicate significant differences between control and glycocalyx-targeting enzymatic treatments. D The bars show the temporal evolution of the jump force distributions for the different experimental conditions, allocating the forces into 3 categories, i.e. low forces < 50 pN, intermediate forces, 50–100 pN, high forces > 100 pN (the original distributions of bond strength can be found in the Additional file 1: SI – SI Fig. S7, to see the dispersion of higher forces