title: Chaperone-assisted translocation of a polymer through a nanopore.
abstract: Using Langevin dynamics simulations, we investigate the dynamics of chaperone-assisted translocation of a flexible polymer through a nanopore. We find that increasing the binding energy ε between the chaperone and the chain and the chaperone concentration N(c) can greatly improve the translocation probability. Particularly, with increasing the chaperone concentration a maximum translocation probability is observed for weak binding. For a fixed chaperone concentration, the histogram of translocation time τ has a transition from a long-tailed distribution to a gaussian distribution with increasing ε. τ rapidly decreases and then almost saturates with increasing binding energy for a short chain; however, it has a minimum for longer chains at a lower chaperone concentration. We also show that τ has a minimum as a function of the chaperone concentration. For different ε, a nonuniversal dependence of τ on the chain length N is also observed. These results can be interpreted by characteristic entropic effects for flexible polymers induced by either the crowding effect from a high chaperone concentration or the intersegmental binding for the high binding energy.
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui Province 230026, PR China.
authors.forename: Wancheng
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Kaifu
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Luo
mesh_terms: D001692:Biological Transport; D018832:Molecular Chaperones / Q000378:metabolism*; D056004:Molecular Dynamics Simulation; D058608:Nanopores; D011108:Polymers / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D018832:Molecular Chaperones; D011108:Polymers