The driving force for channel formation by triheteropolymers confined in hydrophobic nanocylinders was investigated by lattice Monte Carlo simulations. A variety of conditions, such as the interactions between different kinds of segments, the interactions between segments and the nanocylindrical walls, and the structure of the polymer, were considered. It was found that for a channel to be generated, the attractive interaction between one kind of segments and the nanocylindrical wall should be larger than a minimum value. The cross-sectional radius of a channel seen from above or below the ends of the nanotube as a function of the interactions between the segments and the wall as well as of the interactions between different kinds of segments was determined. The succession in the chain of different kinds of segments (the chain connectivity) also plays a significant role in channel formation. The present treatment may provide some insight regarding the formation of protein channels in the phospholipid bilayers of the cell membrane.
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Chen et al. (2009) studied this question.
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