Laboratoire de Physique Théorique
Toulouse - UMR 5152

Using polymer translocation (crossing of a membrane through a pore) is a promising way to cheaply sequence DNA. For this purpose the phenomenon needs to be biased by a force and becomes an interesting out of equilibrium statistical polymer physics problem.

We performed molecular dynamics simulations of the translocation of a coarse grained structured polymer through a thin membrane under a pulling force. We will show our contribution to the general case of a polymer translocation under a pulling force, the previously unobserved need for a threshold force to start the translocation when the polymer is structured and the pore is narrow and finally the different properties of the membrane that can either speed up or slow down the translocation process.