{
  "abstract": "Selective recognition is how a cell finds the right partner in a crowd and how a drug carrier finds the right cell, so getting it wrong means a missed target or a toxic one. It must also be reversible: a cell has to hold its target tightly enough to tell it from everything else, then release it to act again, and equilibrium binding, which weighs only how favorable a contact is, cannot do both. What settles recognition is how long a contact lasts. We make lifetime the control variable, passing from a master equation through a Smoluchowski equation to the Kramers lifetime of a multivalent contact. Lifetimes are exponential in free energy, so a tenfold change in receptor number moves a contact from seconds to months, turning a smooth thermodynamic gradient into a switch. Selectivity then depends on the encounter: under flow a nanoparticle is kept only if its contact outlives the vascular dwell time, which sharpens the density threshold beyond equilibrium binding. Receptor-mediated endocytosis is itself a kinetic-proofreading cascade, so uptake inherits the Kramers exponential raised to the number of driven steps, a double amplification that vanishes without metabolism and gives a testable route to phenotype-selective delivery. The same readout, on a single bond, is how a T cell discriminates antigen, with immune memory lowering the activation threshold while leaving the specificity untouched.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2610.38394",
  "author_total": 1,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Giuseppe Battaglia"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/5w4wyd40nshp3.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2610.38394",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "5w4wyd40nshp3",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.38394",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY-NC-SA 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "physics.bio-ph"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "q-bio.CB"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": null,
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.38394",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-28",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/5w4wyd40nshp3.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:36:23Z",
      "native_id": "2610.38394",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.38394"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "arxiv:q-bio.CB",
      "subfield": "cell-biology"
    },
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:physics.bio-ph",
      "subfield": "biological-medical"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Kinetics, Proofreading, and the Lifetime of Multivalent Contacts",
  "title_text": "Kinetics, Proofreading, and the Lifetime of Multivalent Contacts",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-01T12:20:56Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/5w4wyd40nshp3",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}