Bound-State Diffusion due to Binding to Flexible Polymers in a Selective Biofilter (Biophysical Journal)

Selective biofilters are used by cells to control the transport of proteins, nucleic acids, and other macromolecules. Biological filters demonstrate both high specificity and rapid motion or high flux of proteins. In contrast, high flux comes at the expense of selectivity in many synthetic filters. Binding can lead to selective transport in systems in which the bound particle can diffuse, but the mechanisms that lead to bound diffusion remain unclear. Previous theory has proposed a molecular mechanism of bound-state mobility based only on transient binding to flexible polymers.