Berlin 2008 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 2: DNA and Chromatin
BP 2.1: Vortrag
Montag, 25. Februar 2008, 10:30–10:45, PC 203
Structure and dynamics of interphase chromosomes — Angelo Rosa1 and •Ralf Everaers2 — 1Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems, Corona de Aragón 42, 50009 Zaragoza (Spain) — 2Université de Lyon, Laboratoire de Physique, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, CNRS UMR 5672, 46 allée d’Italie, 69364 Lyon Cedex 07, France
During interphase chromosomes decondense, but FISH experiments reveal the existence of distinct territories occupied by individual chromosomes inside the nuclei of most eukaryotic cells. We use computer simulations to show that the existence and stability of territories is a kinetic effect which can be explained without invoking an underlying nuclear scaffold or protein-mediated interactions between DNA sequences. In particular, we show that the experimentally observed territory shapes and spatial distances between marked chromosome sites for human, Drosophila and budding yeast chromosomes can be reproduced by a parameter-free minimal model of decondensing chromosomes. Our results suggest that the observed interphase structure and dynamics are due to generic polymer effects: confined Brownian motion conserving the local topological state of long chain molecules and segregation of mutually unentangled chains due to topological constraints.