Description
Recent advances in genetics, biochemistry, cell biology, and biophysics have contributed to our understanding that the genome is organized hierarchically, with higher order macromolecular assemblies spanning spatial and temporal orders of magnitude. Beyond being wrapped around histones as irregular groups of “beads on a string”, chromatin is organized into topologically associated domains, which are composed of small and large loops, and form euchromatic and heterochromatic compartments. In this talk, I will present biophysical principles we are uncovering about genome organization across three different scales, including sequence-dependent DNA mechanics, chromatin loops for homology search, and polyamines' role in translating nucleosome condensability into 3D genome organization.
