< Back to Article

Dynamic Nucleosome Movement Provides Structural Information of Topological Chromatin Domains in Living Human Cells

Fig 1

Schematic illustration of our polymer model for CDs.

(A) A nucleosome fiber is represented as a polymer bead chain and forms a CD. The size scaling of CDs is expressed as , where the fractal dimension represents the effective conformational state of CDs: d_f = 1, 2, and 3 correspond to a straight line, the ideal chain, and the fractal globule, respectively. (B) The viscoelasticity of the medium, where the movement of particles shows the subdiffusive FBM 〈Δr(t)²〉∼t^α, is described using the friction coefficient with memory, γ(t)∼t^−α. When a nucleosome with coordinates R_n(t) dynamically fluctuates in the viscoelastic medium, the movement of nucleosomes in CDs shows subdiffusion: 〈ΔR_n(t)²〉∼t^β.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005136.g001