Polymer translocation in the presence of excluded volume and explicit hydrodynamic interactions

Molecular Dynamics simulations of polymer translocation are hereby reported. No external force was applied to the polymer during translocation, and the dynamics was dominated by polymer-pore interactions. It was found that hydrodynamic interactions play an important role in the relaxation of the polymer on each side of the membrane but have a negligible impact on the translocation process itself. Also, the scaling laws obtained for the relaxation and translocation times indicate that long translocating polymers may be considered to be following a quasi-equilibrium anomalous diffusion process in the absence of external forces. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.