Interphase human chromosome exhibits out of equilibrium glassy dynamics

Guang Shi, Lei Liu, Changbong Hyeon and D. Thirumalai ()
Additional contact information
Guang Shi: University of Maryland
Lei Liu: Korea Institute for Advanced Study
Changbong Hyeon: Korea Institute for Advanced Study
D. Thirumalai: University of Texas at Austin

Nature Communications, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Fingerprints of the three-dimensional organization of genomes have emerged using advances in Hi-C and imaging techniques. However, genome dynamics is poorly understood. Here, we create the chromosome copolymer model (CCM) by representing chromosomes as a copolymer with two epigenetic loci types corresponding to euchromatin and heterochromatin. Using novel clustering techniques, we establish quantitatively that the simulated contact maps and topologically associating domains (TADs) for chromosomes 5 and 10 and those inferred from Hi-C experiments are in good agreement. Chromatin exhibits glassy dynamics with coherent motion on micron scale. The broad distribution of the diffusion exponents of the individual loci, which quantitatively agrees with experiments, is suggestive of highly heterogeneous dynamics. This is reflected in the cell-to-cell variations in the contact maps. Chromosome organization is hierarchical, involving the formation of chromosome droplets (CDs) on genomic scale, coinciding with the TAD size, followed by coalescence of the CDs, reminiscent of Ostwald ripening.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05606-6 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-05606-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-05606-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().