Hairy nanochannels - from silicon nanopores to the nuclear pore complex of yeast.

Hairy nanopores are narrow channels with polymers grafted to the walls, that can act as selective molecular sieves. They can be made by end-grafting of synthetic polymers, disordered proteins or DNA molecules to the inner walls of pores made of thin SiN or gold slabs. The nuclear pore complex (NPC) that controls the nucleo-cytoplasmic traffic in eukaryotic cells is another example of a hairy pore in which the selection is done by a large number of nucleoporins (FG nups) that fill the inner space of the NPC. Using molecular mean-field theory methods we study the effects of geometry, hydrophobicity and electrostatics on the morphology of hairy nanochannels and apply this methodology to the modeling of NPC of yeast.