Biophysical Society Thematic Meeting| Les Houches 2019

Multiscale Modeling of Chromatin: Bridging Experiment with Theory

Friday Speaker Abstracts

MECHANICAL CONTROL OF CHROMOSOME ORGANIZATION AND GENE EXPRESSION G.V. Shivashankar 1 ; 1 Mechanobiology Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, South-West, Singapore Recent studies highlight the importance of 3D chromosome organization in regulating gene expression within living cells. However, cells are subjected to mechanical deformations within tissue microenvironment and it is unclear how such deformations affect chromosome organization, their intermingling and gene expression. To address this we use micro patterned substrates that allow quantitative methods to engineer mechanical deformations of cells. In this talk, I will show that the deformation of cells result in specific rearrangements in chromosome positions and nanoscale functional gene clustering correlating with their gene expression programs. Importantly, we show that the mechanical state of cells, and thus their chromosome organization and their intermingling, dictate micro-environmental control of gene expression programs. These results highlight an important layer of scale-dependent genome regulation resulting from the coupling between cell mechanics and 3D organization of chromosomes to maintain tissue homeostasis.

A 3D CODE IN THE HUMAN GENOME Erez Lieberman-Aiden Baylor College of Medicine, USA No Abstract

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