Simulation Study of Chain-like Body Translocation through Conical Pores in Thick Membranes

Abstract

Artificial membranes with conical pores and controllable thickness reveal ionic-transport capabilities that are superior compared with those offered by cylindrical pores. By simulating the translocation of an abstract chain-like body through a conical pore in a membrane with a variable thickness, we formulate a statistical model of the translocation time τ. Our rough model encodes the biochemical details of a given real chain-like molecule as evolving sequences of the allowed chain-like body’s conformations. In our simulation experiments, we focus primarily on pore geometry and kinetic aspects of the translocation process. We study the impact of the membrane thickness L, and both conical-pore diameters ϕcis,ϕtrans on the probability distribution of τ. We have found that for all considered simulation setups, the randomness of τ is accurately described by the family of Moyal distributions while its expected value τ is proportional to Lξ, with ξ being dependent on ϕcis,ϕtrans.