Anomalous binding memory in heterogeneous molecular systems

Abstract

Understanding how molecular binding couples with diffusion is fundamental to molecular engineering and biomedical applications. At the mesoscale, this coupling gives rise to a binding memory effect, characterized by power-law decays in temporal binding autocorrelations. This repeated binding-unbinding cycles transforms the static, affinity-limited binding picture into a dynamic landscape. While scaling theory has successfully described simple systems, the nature of this coupling in realistic, heterogeneous environments remains poorly understood. Here, we combine high-throughput simulations, theoretical analysis and numerical modelling to reveal how environmental heterogeneity reshapes binding memory and transport statistics. We show that hopping, a nonlocal jump process, induces strong spatiotemporal correlations across binding sites. This leads to diffusion with non-Gaussian statistics and a spectrum of anomalous scaling behaviors for binding memory. In contrast to the universal scaling observed in homogeneous settings, the complex binding-diffusion interplay in heterogeneous binding landscape renders binding memory a tunable property, opening new avenues for molecular-level engineering of chemical reactions, catalysis, and materials design.