Time scale of entropic segregation of flexible polymers in confinement: implications for chromosome segregation in filamentous bacteria

We report molecular dynamics simulations of the segregation of two overlapping chains in cylindrical confinement. We find that the entropic repulsion between chains can be sufficiently strong to cause segregation on a time scale that is short compared to the one for diffusion. This result implies that entropic driving forces are sufficiently strong to cause rapid bacterial chromosome segregation.