Electrophoresis of a DNA Coil Near a Nanopore

TL;DR

This paper models the electro-osmotic flow around a long polymer near a nanopore using an elongated jet analogy, providing insights into DNA electrophoresis in non-uniform electric fields.

Contribution

It introduces a coarse-grained model based on elongated jet solutions to analyze DNA electrophoresis near nanopores, extending known theories to non-uniform fields.

Findings

The model qualitatively matches known electrophoretic behaviors.

It provides a framework for analyzing polymer coils in non-uniform fields.

The approach links electrohydrodynamics with polymer electrophoresis near nanopores.

Abstract

Motivated by DNA electrophoresis near a nanopore, we consider the flow field around an "elongated jet", a long thin source which injects momentum into a liquid. This solution qualitatively describes the electro-osmotic flow around a long rigid polymer, where due to electrohydrodynamic coupling, the solvent receives momentum from the electric field. Based on the qualitative behavior of the elongated jet solution, we develop a coarse-grained scheme which reproduces the known theoretical results regarding the electrophoretic behavior of a long rigid polymer and a polymer coil in a uniform field, which we then exploit to analyze the electrophoresis of a polymer coil in the non-uniform field near a nanopore.