Polymer Translocation in Crowded Environments

Abstract

We study the effect of the crowded nature of the cellular cytoplasm on the translocation of a polymer through a pore in a membrane. By systematically treating the entropic penalty due to crowding, we show that the translocation dynamics are significantly altered, leading to novel scaling behaviors of the translocation time in terms of chain length. We also observe new and qualitatively different translocation regimes depending upon the extent of crowding, transmembrane chemical potential asymmetry, and polymer length.

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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Polymer translocation out of confined environments
• Effect of charge distribution on the translocation of an inhomogeneously charged polymer through a nanopore