Driven translocation of a polymer: role of pore friction and crowding

Force-driven translocation of a macromolecule through a nanopore is investigated systematically by taking into account the monomer-pore friction as well as the "crowding" of monomers on the trans-side of the membrane which counterbalance the driving force acting in the pore. The problem is treated self-consistently, so that the resulting force in the pore and the dynamics on the cis and trans sides mutually influence each other. The set of governing differential-algebraic equations for the translocation dynamics is derived and solved numerically. The analysis of this solution shows that the crowding of monomers on the trans side hardly affects the dynamics, but the monomer-pore friction can substantially slow down the translocation process. Moreover, the translocation exponent α in the translocation time-vs.-chain length scaling law, τ ∝ N(α), becomes smaller for relatively small chain lengths as the monomer-pore friction coefficient increases. This is most noticeable for relatively strong forces. Our findings show that the variety of values for α reported in experiments and computer simulations, may be attributed to different pore frictions, whereas crowding effects can generally be neglected.