Passage Times for Unbiased Polymer Translocation through a Narrow Pore

TL;DR

This paper investigates the translocation times of polymers through narrow pores without external forces, analyzing how these times scale with polymer length, pore size, and membrane thickness using polymer dynamics theories.

Contribution

It provides new scaling relations for translocation and dwell times based on polymer dynamics and equilibrium properties, applicable to various pore and membrane sizes.

Findings

Scaling relations for mean translocation and dwell times derived

Dependence of translocation times on polymer length, pore size, and membrane thickness

Explanation based on polymer dynamics and equilibrium properties

Abstract

We study the translocation process of a polymer in the absence of external fields for various pore diameters $b$ and membrane thickness $L$. The polymer performs Rouse and reptation dynamics. The mean translocation time $<\tau_t>$ that the polymer needs to escape from a cell, and the mean dwell time $<\tau_d>$ that the polymer spends in the pore during the translocation process, obey scaling relations in terms of the polymer length $N$, $L$ and $b/R_g$, where $R_g$ is the radius of gyration for the polymer. We explain these relations using simple arguments based on polymer dynamics and the equilibrium properties of polymers.