Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme

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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik

CPP 45: Focus: Charge Effects in Soft and Biological Matter I (jointly with BP)

CPP 45.4: Talk

Thursday, March 25, 2010, 12:15–12:30, H45

DNA Translocation through Nanopores: What is the role of dielectric permittivity? — •Stefan Kesselheim¹, Marcello Sega², Mehmet Süzen³, and Christian Holm¹ — ¹Institut für Computerphysik, Universität Stuttgart — ²Department of Physics and INFN, University of Trento — ³Institute of Photonic Sciences, Castelldefels (Barcelona), Spain

We investigate the free energy barrier of a single DNA molecule filed through a synthetic nanopore. We employ a recently developed algorithm (ICC*) that allows to take into account the dielectric contrast at the membrane/solute interface in coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations. The investigations show the crucial contribution of dielectric mismatch to the translocation free energy barrier. We show that for low ionic strength and DNA fragments up to 100 bp the dielectric boundary forces dominate over the entropic contribution caused by DNA flexibility.