Related papers: The physics of chromatin
Chromatin organization and dynamics is studied in this work at scales ranging from single nucleosome to nucleosomal array by using a unique combination of biochemical assays, single molecule imaging technique and numerical modeling. We…
A problem of substantial interest is to systematically map variation in chromatin structure to gene expression regulation across conditions, environments, or differentiated cell types. We developed and applied a quantitative framework for…
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…
Several processes in the cell, such as gene regulation, start when key proteins recognise and bind to short DNA sequences. However, as these sequences can be hundreds of million times shorter than the genome, they are hard to find by simple…
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,…
Understanding chromatin dynamics across multiple spatiotemporal scales requires models that reconcile biological specificity with physics-based interactions and computational tractability. We present a modular, recognition-enabled…
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…
Nucleic acids, like DNA and RNA, are molecules that are present in any life form. Their most notable function is to encode biological information. Why then would a physicist be interested in these molecules? As we will see, DNA is an…
We investigate a densely packed, non-random arrangement of forty-six chromosomes (46,XY) in human nuclei. Here, we model systems-level chromosomal crosstalk by unifying intrinsic parameters (chromosomal length and number of genes) across…
DNA-spools, structures in which DNA is wrapped and helically coiled onto itself or onto a protein core are ubiquitous in nature. We develop a general theory describing the non-equilibrium behavior of DNA-spools under linear tension. Two…
Protein-DNA complexes with loops play a fundamental role in a wide variety of cellular processes, ranging from the regulation of DNA transcription to telomere maintenance. As ubiquitous as they are, their precise in vivo properties and…
Nucleosomes form the basic unit of compaction within eukaryotic genomes and their locations represent an important, yet poorly understood, mechanism of genetic regulation. Quantifying the strength of interactions within the nucleosome is a…
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…
The unconstrained genomic DNA of bacteria forms a coil, which volume exceeds 1000 times the volume of the cell. Since prokaryotes lack a membrane-bound nucleus, in sharp contrast with eukaryotes, the DNA may consequently be expected to…
We present a statistical-mechanical analysis of the positioning of nucleosomes along one of the chromosomes of yeast DNA as a function of the strength of the binding potential and of the chemical potential of the nucleosomes. We find a…
Histone octamers show a heat-induced mobility along DNA. Recent theoretical studies have established two mechanisms that are qualitatively and quantitatively compatible with in vitro experiments on nucleosome sliding: Octamer repositiong…
Found in all eukaryotic cells, linker histones H1 are known to bind to and rearrange nucleosomal linker DNA. In vitro, the fundamental nature of H1/DNA interactions has attracted wide interest among research communities - for biologists…
The ongoing effort to detect and characterize physical entanglement in biopolymers has so far established that knots are present in many globular proteins and also abound in viral DNA packaged inside bacteriophages. RNA molecules, on the…
Nucleosome organization in eukaryotic genomes has a deep impact on gene function. Although progress has been recently made in the identification of various concurring factors influencing nucleosome positioning, it is still unclear whether…
Different numerical mappings of the DNA sequences have been studied using a new cluster-scaling method and the well known spectral methods. It is shown, in particular, that the nucleotide sequences in DNA molecules have robust…