Genome organization in the nucleus studied by live-cell

By measuring the dynamics of genomic entities in the nucleus of a living cell,

we identified a mechanism that maintains its order.

In normal cells, all the sites in the genome exhibit anomalous diffusion with a

power law of ~0.4. The diffusion was characterized through different tests and

was found to belong to the family of fractional Brownian motion anomalous

diffusion.

Based on that, we rationalized that the source of the visco-elasticity is a protein

that can temporarily bind chromatin. We identified the source protein and

showed that a phase transition from viscoelastic to viscous diffusion occurs

when its expression is inhibited. This was verified by other dynamic

measurement.