Related papers: Understanding how chromatin folding and enzyme com…
Epigenetic landscapes, represented by patterns of chemical modifications on histone tails, are essential for maintaining cell identity and tissue homeostasis. These landscapes are shaped by multiple factors, including local biochemical…
Cells often exhibit different and stable phenotypes from the same DNA sequence. Robustness and plasticity of such cellular states are controlled by diverse transcriptional and epigenetic mechanisms, among them the modification of…
The spreading and regulation of epigenetic marks on chromosomes is crucial to establish and maintain cellular identity. Nonetheless, the dynamical mechanism leading to the establishment and maintenance of a given, cell-line specific,…
Essential life processes take place across multiple space and time scales in living organisms but understanding their mechanistic interactions remains an ongoing challenge. Advanced multiscale modeling techniques are providing new…
The role of post-translational modification of histones in eukaryotic gene regulation is well recognized. Epigenetic silencing of genes via heritable chromatin modifications plays a major role in cell fate specification in higher organisms.…
Epigenetic modifications to histones may promote either activation or repression of the transcription of nearby genes. Recent experimental studies show that the promoters of many lineage-control genes in stem cells have "bivalent domains"…
Chromatin is repeatedly deformed in vivo during transcription, nuclear remodeling, and confined migration - yet how mechanical response varies from locus to locus, and how it relates to epigenetic state, remains unclear. We develop a theory…
The emergence of and transitions between distinct phenotypes in isogenic cells can be attributed to the intricate interplay of epigenetic marks, external signals, and gene regulatory elements. These elements include chromatin remodelers,…
Epigenetic mechanisms of silencing via heritable chromatin modifications play a major role in gene regulation and cell fate specification. We consider a model of epigenetic chromatin silencing in budding yeast and study the bifurcation…
Epigenetic histone modifications play an important role in the maintenance of different cell phenotypes. The exact molecular mechanism for inheritance of the modification patterns over cell generations remains elusive. We construct a…
Epigenetics is a driving force of important and ubiquitous phenomena in nature such as cell differentiation or even metamorphosis. Oppositely to its widespread role, understanding the biophysical principles that allow epigenetics to control…
In higher organisms, all cells share the same genome, but every cell expresses only a limited and specific set of genes that defines the cell type. During cell division, not only the genome, but also the cell type is inherited by the…
Maintaining tissue homeostasis requires appropriate regulation of stem cell differentiation. The Waddington landscape posits that gene circuits in a cell form a potential landscape of different cell types, wherein cells follow attractors of…
How do mammalian cells that share the same genome exist in notably distinct phenotypes, exhibiting differences in morphology, gene expression patterns, and epigenetic chromatin statuses? Furthermore how do cells of different phenotypes…
One of the most important problems in development is how epigenetic domains can be first established, and then maintained, within cells. To address this question, we propose a framework which couples 3D chromatin folding dynamics, to a…
Reprogramming is a process of transforming differentiated cells into pluripotent stem cells by inducing specific modifying factors in the cells. Reprogramming is a non-equilibrium process involving a collaboration at levels separated by…
Chromatin is known to be organized into multiple domains of varying sizes and compaction. While these domains are often imagined as static structures, they are highly dynamic and show cell-to-cell variability. Since processes such as gene…
Reconciling the stability of epigenetic patterns with the rapid turnover of histone modifications and their adaptability to external stimuli is an outstanding challenge. Here, we propose a new biophysical mechanism that can establish and…
Epigenetic modifications of histones crucially affect the eukaryotic gene activity, while the epigenetic histone state is largely determined by the binding of specific factors such as the transcription factors (TFs) to DNA. Here, the way…
Epigenetic cell memory, the inheritance of gene expression patterns across subsequent cell divisions, is a critical property of multi-cellular organisms. In recent work [10], a subset of the authors observed in a simulation study how the…