Electrohydrodynamic instabilities of DNA aggregates: a mean field description

In this work we investigate the experimentally observed electrohydrodynamic instabilities in a confined suspension of lambda-DNA under strong electric fields. We model the underlying stochastic motion of the DNA coils on a coarse grained level, using continuous functions to describe the charge density of the system in space and time. We find, within our approach, that in contrast to previous results there are no long ranged violations of electroneutrality around aggregates of lambda-DNA. We also show that although the corresponding Debye layer is small on the surface of a given aggregate, the electric field can induce a flow field of the solvent which in turn results in a stable pattern of aggregates, which is in agreement with the experimental observations