English

Phase Transition in Reconstituted Chromatin

Subcellular Processes 2015-06-26 v3

Abstract

By observing reconstituted chromatin by fluorescence microscopy (FM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), we found that the density of nucleosomes exhibits a bimodal profile, i.e., there is a large transition between the dense and dispersed states in reconstituted chromatin. Based on an analysis of the spatial distribution of nucleosome cores, we deduced an effective thermodynamic potential as a function of the nucleosome-nucleosome distance. This enabled us to interpret the folding transition of chromatin in terms of a first-order phase transition. This mechanism for the condensation of chromatin is discussed in terms of its biological significance.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.q-bio/0407011,
  title  = {Phase Transition in Reconstituted Chromatin},
  author = {Tonau Nakai and Kohji Hizume and Shige. H. Yoshimura and Kunio Takeyasu and Kenichi Yoshikawa},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:q-bio/0407011},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

16 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-22T19:23:19.412Z