Antipolar and Anticlinic Mesophase Order in Chromatin Induced by Nucleosome Polarity and Chirality Correlations

Contrary to the usual "rigid supermolecular assembly" paradigm of chromatin structure, we propose to analyze its eventual ordered state in terms of symmetry properties of individual nucleosomes that give rise to mesophase order parameters, like in many other soft-matter systems. Basing our...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2015-06, Vol.114 (23), p.238102-238102, Article 238102
Main Authors: Garcés, R, Podgornik, R, Lorman, V
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Assembly
Biological Physics
Cell Polarity - physiology
Chromatin - chemistry
Chromatin - genetics
Condensed Matter
Correlation
DNA - chemistry
DNA - genetics
Mesophase
Mesoscale phenomena
Models, Biological
Models, Chemical
Nucleosomes - chemistry
Nucleosomes - genetics
Order parameters
Other
Physics
Polarity
Stemming
Stereoisomerism
Twisting
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Summary:Contrary to the usual "rigid supermolecular assembly" paradigm of chromatin structure, we propose to analyze its eventual ordered state in terms of symmetry properties of individual nucleosomes that give rise to mesophase order parameters, like in many other soft-matter systems. Basing our approach on the Landau-de Gennes phenomenology, we describe the mesoscale order in chromatin by antipolar and anticlinic correlations of chiral individual nucleosomes. This approach leads to a unifying physical picture of a whole series of soft locally ordered states with different apparent structures, including the recently observed heteromorphic chromatin, stemming from the antipolar arrangement of nucleosomes complemented by their chiral twisting. Properties of these states under an external force field can reconcile apparently contradictory results of single-molecule experiments.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.238102