相关论文: Confinement and crowding control the morphology an…
Inspired by recent experiments on the effects of cytosolic crowders on the organization of bacterial chromosomes, we consider a "feather-boa" type model chromosome in the presence of non-additive crowders, encapsulated within a cylindrical…
During the life cycle of bacterial cells the non-mixing of the two ring-shaped daughter genomes is an important prerequisite for the cell division process. Mimicking the environments inside highly crowded biological cells, we study the…
For short DNA molecules in crowded environments, we evaluate macroscopic parameters such as the average end-to-end distance and the twist conformation by tuning the strength of the site specific confinement driven by the crowders. The…
The looping of polymers such as DNA is a fundamental process in the molecular biology of living cells, whose interior is characterised by a high degree of molecular crowding. We here investigate in detail the looping dynamics of flexible…
Chromatin and associated proteins constitute the highly folded structure of chromosomes. We consider a self-avoiding polymer model of the chromatin, segments of which may get cross-linked via protein binders that repel each other. The…
Macromolecular crowding plays a principal role in a wide range of biological processes including gene expression, chromosomal compaction, and viral infection. However, the impact that crowding has on the dynamics of nucleic acids remains a…
How long threadlike eukaryotic chromosomes fit tidily in the small volume of the nucleus without significant entanglement is just beginning to be understood, thanks to major advances in experimental techniques. Several polymer models, which…
We showed in our previous studies that just $3\%$ cross-links, at special points along the contour of the bacterial DNA help the DNA-polymer to get organized at micron length scales \cite{jpcm,epl}. In this work, we investigate how does the…
While bacterial chromosomes were long thought to be amorphous, recent experiments reveal pronounced organizational features. However, the extent of bacterial chromosome organization remains unclear. Here, we develop a fully data-driven…
We consider a linear polymer chain in a disordered environment modeled by percolation clusters on a square lattice. The disordered environment is meant to roughly represent molecular crowding as seen in cells. The model may be viewed as the…
Recent experiments have been able to visualise chromosome organization in fast-growing E.coli cells. However, the mechanism underlying the spatio-temporal organization remains poorly understood. We propose that the DNA adopts a specific…
In the cell, protein complexes form relying on specific interactions between their monomers. Excluded volume effects due to molecular crowding would lead to correlations between molecules even without specific interactions. What is the…
The interplay between bacterial chromosome organization and functions such as transcription and replication can be studied in increasing detail using novel experimental techniques. Interpreting the resulting quantitative data, however, can…
Bacteria are able to maintain a narrow distribution of cell sizes by regulating the timing of cell divisions. In rich nutrient conditions, cells divide much faster than their chromosomes replicate. This implies that cells maintain multiple…
We report molecular dynamics simulations of the segregation of two overlapping chains in cylindrical confinement. We find that the entropic repulsion between the chains can be sufficiently strong to cause segregation on a time scale that is…
Semiflexible polymers are ubiquitous in natural and artificial systems, where their intermediate rigidity gives rise to rich structural and dynamical behavior. Confinement plays a central role in these behaviors, as spatial restrictions can…
The spreading of bacterial populations is central to processes in agriculture, the environment, and medicine. However, existing models of spreading typically focus on cells in unconfined settings--despite the fact that many bacteria inhabit…
We perform molecular dynamics simulations for a simple coarse-grained model of crambin placed inside of a softly repulsive sphere of radius R. The confinement makes folding at the optimal temperature slower and affects the folding…
Effect of molecular crowding and confinement experienced by protein in the cell during unfolding has been studied by modeling a linear polymer chain on a percolation cluster. It is known that internal structure of the cell changes in time,…
In bacteria, regulatory proteins search for a specific DNA binding target via "facilitated diffusion": a series of rounds of 3D diffusion in the cytoplasm, and 1D linear diffusion along the DNA contour. Using large scale Brownian dynamics…