Spatial Organization of Biological Fuctions | BPS Thematic Meeting

Spatial Organization of Biological Functions Meeting

Poster Abstracts

11-POS Board 11 FROM NUCLEOSOMES TO CHROMOSOMES: SIMULATING CHROMATIN WITH ACTIVE FORCES Adwaith P.P. ; Chromatin is a hierarchical structure with organization spanning several orders of magnitude in length scale. While processes like genome reading and repair occur at the base-pair level, chromosome folding into functional regions (such as enhancers and heterochromatin) takes place over the scale of multiple nucleosomes. Using a data-driven approach, we simulate the physical properties of human chromatin from the nucleosome scale ( ∼ 200 bp) up to the whole chromosome level, connecting them through the domain scale. By comparing our simulation results with available experimental data, we demonstrate that a specific form of non-equilibrium activity is necessary to explain both the large-scale length fluctuations and sharp angle fluctuations observed in chromatin. Fitting our model to the data, we extract key parameters of activity—namely, the strengths of stretching and bending—that are crucial for realistic chromatin simulations.

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