Soft jamming of viral particles in nanopores

Abstract

Viruses have remarkable physical properties and complex interactions with their environment. However, their aggregation in confined spaces remains unexplored, although this phenomenon is of paramount importance for understanding viral infectivity. Using hydrodynamical driving and optical detection, we developed a method to detect the transport of single virus in real time through synthetic nanopores. We unveiled a jamming phenomenon specifically associated with virus confinement under flow. We showed that the interactions of viral particles with themselves and with the pore surface were critical for clog formation. Based on the detailed screening of the physical and chemical determinants, we proposed a simple dynamical model that recapitulated all the experimental observations. Our results pave the way for the study of jamming phenomena in the presence of more complex interactions.