Translocation of Biopolymer Chain Through a Nanopore: Coil--Helix Transition

The translocation dynamics of a single biopolymer chain through a nanopore in a membrane is investigated by taking the coil--helix transition into account. Based on the changing of the free energy due to the coil--helix transition, the mean first passage time τ is obtained, and then the corresponding numerical simulations are presented under different conditions. It is shown that the coil--helix transition can significantly shorten the translocation time of the biopolymer chain. In addition, we also discuss the scaling behaviour for τ with the chain length N and some related problems.