Evaluation of the Kirkwood approximation for the diffusivity of channel-confined DNA chains in the de Gennes regime

We use Brownian dynamics with hydrodynamic interactions to calculate both the Kirkwood (short-time) diffusivity and the long-time diffusivity of DNA chains from free solution down to channel confinement in the de Gennes regime. The Kirkwood diffusivity in confinement is always higher than the diffusivity obtained from the mean-squared displacement of the center-of-mass, as is the case in free solution. Moreover, the divergence of the local diffusion tensor, which is non-zero in confinement, makes a negligible contribution to the latter diffusivity in confinement. The maximum error in the Kirkwood approximation in our simulations is about 2% for experimentally relevant simulation times. The error decreases with increasing confinement, consistent with arguments from blob theory and the molecular-weight dependence of the error in free solution. In light of the typical experimental errors in measuring the properties of channel-confined DNA, our results suggest that the Kirkwood approximation is sufficiently accurate to model experimental data. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.