Electrophoretic Mobility of Asymmetric Reptating Polymers

The electrophoretic mobility of an asymmetric reptating molecule---ball and chain---may depend on chain length quite unlike symmetric molecules. Analytic and numerical evidence indicates that resolution in the model introduced in this paper remains good for long chains instead of deteriorating rapidly as in conventional electrophoresis. Given the biotechnological importance of gel electrophoresis for sequencing and separating DNA, this model's complementary dynamics may be useful experimentally.