Origin of spatial organization of DNA-polymer in bacterial chromosomes

Abstract

In-vivo DNA organization at large length scales ($\sim 100nm$) is highly debated and polymer models have proved useful to understand the principle of DNA-organization. Here, we show that $<2$% cross-links at specific points in a ring polymer can lead to a distinct spatial organization of the polymer. The specific pairs of cross-linked monomers were extracted from contact maps of bacterial DNA. We are able to predict the structure of 2 DNAs using Monte Carlo simulations of the bead-spring polymer with cross-links at these special positions. Simulations with cross-links at random positions along the chain show that the organization of the polymer is different in nature from the previous case.

arXiv commentarXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1701.05068

References in corpus (3)

• Effects of topological constraints on globular polymers
• Compaction of bacterial genomic DNA: Clarifying the concepts
• Role of special cross-links in structure formation of bacterial DNA polymer

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Bacterial chromosome organization II: few special cross-links, cell confinement, and molecular crowders play the pivotal roles
• Bacterial chromosome organization I: crucial role of release of topological constraints and molecular crowders
• Cross-linker mediated compaction and local morphologies in a model chromosome
• Entropic organization of topologically modified ring polymers in spherical confinement
• Entropic alignment of topologically modified ring polymers in cylindrical confinement