Regensburg 2022 – scientific programme

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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik

CPP 13: Charged Soft Matter, Polyelectrolytes and Ionic Liquid

CPP 13.4: Talk

Tuesday, September 6, 2022, 10:30–10:45, H38

Ratcheting charged polymers through symmetric nanopores using pulsed fields: Designing a low pass filter for concentrating DNA — •Le Qiao and Gary W. Slater — Department of Physics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada

Size-based separation of DNA molecules is crucial for molecular analyses such as genome sequencing. To date, gel electrophoresis is the most commonly used separation method in the laboratory. However, due to poor resolution for larger molecules and difficult sample recovery, it cannot meet the goal of bulk separation. Alternatively, micro/nanofluidics offers a relatively inexpensive, label-free, and continuous separation with high throughput. In this talk, I will present a new proof-of-concept idea for the separation of DNA by contour length using a nanofluidic ratchet by combining nanopore translocation and pulsed fields. Using Langevin dynamics simulations, we show that it is possible to design pulsed fields to ratchet semiflexible molecules such that only short chains are successfully translocated, effectively turning the nanopore process into a molecular low-pass filter. The process itself can be performed with many pores in parallel, and it is possible to integrate it directly into nanopore sequencing devices, increasing its potential utility.