Dr. Sauro Succi: "Multiscale lattice-Boltzmann Molecular Dynamics simulations: translocation of biopolymers through nanopores and beyond”

We have recently developed a novel multiscale approach which concurrently couples a mesoscopic, lattice Boltzmann, fluid solvent with molecular motion. This scheme has been applied to the problem of biopolymer translocation through nanopores. Results from thousands of numerical simulations of long biopolymers up to 8000 monomers passing through pores of various sizes are presented. This multiscale methodology satisfactorily reproduces the statistical scaling behavior of the translocation process and provides valuable insights into the cooperative correlations between biopolymer and hydrodynamic motion. Based on these results, a phenomenological model incorporating the statistical and dynamical features of the translocation process is constructed, which successfully predicts the power-law dependence of the translocation time on the biopolymer length.