Advances in the study on the micro/nanoscale transport of DNA molecule fluids by using multi-scale algorithm

Understanding the transport of DNA molecule fluids at the micro/nanoscale is very important to the design and optimization of micro/nano fluid mechanical devices. The movement and deformation of DNA molecules and their interactions with surrounding fluid is a coupling and complex multi-scale problem. Due to lack of universal theoretical solution, numerical simulation, as a viable and economical technical route, is widely used in the fundamental studies of this kind of problem and in the practical design and application of various bio-micro/nano fluid mechanical devices. The major progress of multi-scale simulations of the micro/nanoscale transport of DNA molecule fluids in modern numerical research is reviewed. Several polymer chain models of DNA molecules now widely used in simulation are briefly introduced, and then recent development of the molecular dynamics (MD) method and other MD-based multi-scale algorithms are discussed; in particular, the new improvements and existing limitations of these algorithms are fully analyzed when they are applied to simulations of the dynamic behavior of DNA molecules and of the transfer of surrounding fluid.