One of the current Grand Challenges is to develop technology for
rapid and inexpensive sequencing of the human DNA. The most promising
candidate for this is the idea to force DNA though a nanopore and read
its sequence during the translocation process. It is thus imperative to
understand the nature of this process. It turns out that the translocation
dynamics of polymers though nanopores driven by external fields is a
far-from-equilibrium process, which can be understood based on the
tension propagation (TP) theory. In particular, the coarse grained
Brownian Dynamics TP theory within the iso-flux (IFTP) assumption allows
a self-consistent derivation of analytic equations of motion for the
dynamics, including an explicit form for the chain length dependence
of the average translocation time. In this talk I will discuss the
fundamentals of the IFTP theory and its various applications theory
to translocation dynamics of long semi-flexible and end-pulled polymer
chains. I will also discuss recent works trying to elucidate the role
of hydrodynamics and electrostatic interactions on translocation of
rod-like molecules in finite and infinite cylindrical nanopores.