학술논문

Folding and cytoplasm viscoelasticity contribute jointly to chromosome dynamics
Document Type
Working Paper
Source
Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 088101 (2018)
Subject
Physics - Biological Physics
Condensed Matter - Soft Condensed Matter
Condensed Matter - Statistical Mechanics
Quantitative Biology - Subcellular Processes
Language
Abstract
The chromosome is a key player of cell physiology, and its dynamics provides valuable information about its physical organization. In both prokaryotes and eukaryotes, the short-time motion of chromosomal loci has been described as a Rouse model in a simple or viscoelastic medium. However, little emphasis has been put on the role played by the folded organization of chromosomes on the local dynamics. Clearly, stress-propagation, and thus dynamics, must be affected by such organization, but a theory allowing to extract such information from data, e.g.\ of two-point correlations, is lacking. Here, we describe a theoretical framework able to answer this general polymer dynamics question, and we provide a general scaling analysis of the stress-propagation time between two loci at a given arclength distance along the chromosomal coordinate. The results suggest a precise way to detect folding information from the dynamical coupling of chromosome segments. Additionally, we realize this framework in a specific theoretical model of a polymer with variable-range interactions in a viscoelastic medium characterized by a tunable scaling exponent, where we derive analytical estimates of the correlation functions.
Comment: 14 pages including supplementary materials