Related papers: Mesoscale phase separation of chromatin in the nuc…
During interphase, a typical cell nucleus features spatial compartmentalization of transcriptionally active euchromatin and repressed heterochromatin domains. In conventional nuclear organization, euchromatin predominantly occupies the…
Investigating the dynamics of chromatin and the factors that are affecting it, has provided valuable insights into the organization and functionality of the genome in the cell nucleus. We control the expression of Lamin-A, an important…
In living cells, proteins involved in specialized biochemical functions are often spatially organized within biomolecular condensates. Increasing evidence suggests that some of these condensates, including DNA repair condensates, emerge…
By means of a minimal physical model, we investigate the interplay of two phase transitions at play in chromatin organization: (1) liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) within the fluid solvating chromatin, resulting in the formation of…
We perform simulations of a system containing simple model proteins and a polymer representing chromatin. We study the interplay between protein-protein and protein-chromatin interactions, and the resulting condensates which arise due to…
Lamina-associated domains (LADs) cover a large part of the human genome and are thought to play a major role in shaping the nuclear architectural landscape. Here, we perform polymer simulations, microscopy and mass spectrometry to dissect…
Chromatin moves dynamically inside the cell nucleus, and its motion is often correlated with gene functions such as DNA recombination and transcription. A recent study has shown that during early embryogenesis of the nematode,…
Dynamics of nucleosomes, the building blocks of the chromatin, has crucial effects on expression, replication and repair of genomes in eukaryotes. Beside constant movements of nucleosomes by thermal fluctuations, ATP-dependent chromatin…
Understanding chromatin organization and dynamics is important since they crucially affect DNA functions. In this study, we investigate chromatin dynamics by statistically analyzing single-nucleosome movement in living human cells. Bi-modal…
During the eukaryotic cell cycle, chromatin undergoes several conformational changes, which are believed to play key roles in gene expression regulation during interphase, and in genome replication and division during mitosis. In this…
Given the wide range of length scales, the analysis of polymer systems often requires coarse-graining, for which various levels of description may be possible depending on the phenomenon under consideration. Here, we provide a super-coarse…
Eukaryotic DNA is packaged into chromatin: one-dimensional arrays of nucleosomes separated by stretches of linker DNA are folded into 30-nm chromatin fibers which in turn form higher-order structures. Each nucleosome, the fundamental unit…
The conditions of the chromosomes inside the nucleus in the Rabl configuration have been modelled as self-avoiding polymer chains under restraining conditions. To ensure that the chromosomes remain stretched out and lined up, we fixed their…
Chromatin is a highly compact and dynamic nuclear structure that consists of DNA and associated proteins. The main organizational unit is the nucleosome, which consists of a histone octamer with DNA wrapped around it. Histone proteins are…
Chromatin is a complex of DNA, RNA and proteins whose primary function is to package genomic DNA into the tight confines of a cell nucleus. A fundamental repeating unit of chromatin is the nucleosome, an octamer of histone proteins around…
The cell nucleus is enveloped by a complex membrane, whose wrinkling has been implicated in disease and cellular aging. The biophysical dynamics and spectral evolution of nuclear wrinkling during multicellular development remain poorly…
The cell nucleus houses the chromosomes, which are linked to a soft shell of lamin filaments. Experiments indicate that correlated chromosome dynamics and nuclear shape fluctuations arise from motor activity. To identify the physical…
The eukaryotic cell nucleus harbors the DNA genome that is organized in a dynamic chromatin network and embedded in a viscous crowded fluid. This environment directly affects enzymatic reactions and target search processes that access the…
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…
Recent progress has been made in the understanding of the physical properties of chromatin -- the dense complex of DNA and histone proteins that occupies the nuclei of plant and animal cells. Here I will focus on the two lowest levels of…