  The capture and translocation of biomolecules through nanometer-scale pores
are processes with a potential large number of applications, and hence they
have been intensively studied in the recent years. The aim of this paper is to
review existing models of the capture process by a nanopore, together with some
recent experimental data of short single- and double-stranded DNA captured by
Cytolysin A (ClyA) nanopore. ClyA is a transmembrane protein of bacterial
origin which has been recently engineered through site-specific mutations, to
allow the translocation of double- and single-stranded DNA. A comparison
between theoretical estimations and experiments suggests that for both cases
the capture is a reaction-limited process. This is corroborated by the observed
salt dependence of the capture rate, which we find to be in quantitative
agreement with the theoretical predictions.
