Active remodeling of chromatin and implications for in-vivo folding

TL;DR

This paper presents an active chromatin model that explains in-vivo chromatin folding by combining physical interactions and active stresses, suggesting a role in optimizing gene co-localization for efficient transcription.

Contribution

It introduces a novel active chromatin model incorporating polymer physics and active stresses, aligning with experimental observations of chromatin structure.

Findings

Model reproduces experimental chromatin conformations

Active stresses influence chromatin organization

Conformation may optimize gene co-localization

Abstract

Recent high resolution experiments have provided a quantitative description of the statistical properties of interphase chromatin at large scales. These findings have stimulated a search for generic physical interactions that give rise to such specific statistical conformations. Here, we show that an active chromatin model of in-vivo folding, based on the interplay between polymer elasticity, confinement, topological constraints and active stresses arising from the (un)binding of ATP-dependent chromatin-remodeling proteins gives rise to steady state conformations consistent with these experiments. Our results lead us to conjecture that the chromatin conformation resulting from this active folding optimizes information storage by co-locating gene loci which share transcription resources.