2008

Research

The dynamics by which a flexible molecule such as DNA crosses a membrane through a nanoscopic channel is of great interest to understand several biological mechanisms. For example, this type of translocation process is involved in DNA replication and in the mechanism of virus infection of a cell nucleus. The translocation of flexible molecules through nanopores could lead to several applications, such as the fast DNA sequencing, gene therapy, and controlled drug delivery. However, the physics of constrained macromolecules and the fluid that surrounds them at the nanoscopic scale is still not well understood.

We use Molecular Dynamics simulations and milestoning with explicit solvent to study the impact of hydrodynamic interactions on the translocation time of a polymer. We study the the scaling of the translocation time with the polymer chain length, and the effect of the size of pore radius with the translocation time.

Email: xgui.xue@gmail.com