Polymer translocation through nanopore under external electric field: dissipative particle dynamics study

The DNA sequencing technology has achieved a leapfrog development in recent years. As a new generation of the DNA sequencing technology, nanopore sequencing has shown a broad application prospect and attracted vast research interests since it was proposed. In the present study, the dynamics of the electric-driven translocation of a homopolymer through a nanopore is investigated by the dissipative particle dynamics (DPD), in which the homopolymer is modeled as a worm-like chain (WLC). The DPD simulations show that the polymer chain undergoes conformation changes during the translocation process. The different structures of the polymer in the translocation process, i.e., single-file, double folded, and partially folded, and the induced current blockades are analyzed. It is found that the current blockades have different magnitudes due to the polymer molecules traversing the pore with different folding conformations. The nanoscale vortices caused by the concentration polarization layers (CPLs) in the vicinity of the sheet are also studied. The results indicate that the translocation of the polymer has the effect of eliminating the vortices in the polyelectrolyte solution. These findings are expected to provide the theoretical guide for improving the nanopore sequencing technique.