Polymer translocation: the first two decades and the recent diversification

Probably no other field of statistical physics at the borderline of soft matter and biological physics has caused such a flurry of papers as polymer translocation since the 1994 landmark paper by Bezrukov, Vodyanoy, and Parsegian and the study of Kasianowicz in 1996. Experiments, simulations, and th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Soft matter 2014-01, Vol.1 (45), p.916-937
Main Authors: Palyulin, Vladimir V, Ala-Nissila, Tapio, Metzler, Ralf
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological Transport
Biopolymers - metabolism
Cell Membrane - metabolism
DNA - metabolism
Electrolytes - metabolism
Membrane Proteins - metabolism
Porosity
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Summary:Probably no other field of statistical physics at the borderline of soft matter and biological physics has caused such a flurry of papers as polymer translocation since the 1994 landmark paper by Bezrukov, Vodyanoy, and Parsegian and the study of Kasianowicz in 1996. Experiments, simulations, and theoretical approaches are still contributing novel insights to date, while no universal consensus on the statistical understanding of polymer translocation has been reached. We here collect the published results, in particular, the famous-infamous debate on the scaling exponents governing the translocation process. We put these results into perspective and discuss where the field is going. In particular, we argue that the phenomenon of polymer translocation is non-universal and highly sensitive to the exact specifications of the models and experiments used towards its analysis. This review article provides a state-of-the-art summary of polymer translocation with an emphasis on scaling and recent conceptual advances.
ISSN:1744-683X
1744-6848
DOI:10.1039/c4sm01819b