Abstract
During mitosis, human chromosomes are linearly compacted ~ 1000-fold by loop-extruding motors. Recent experiments have shown that condensins extrude DNA loops, but in a “one-sided” manner. We explore whether one-sided extrusion can compact chromosomes by developing a mean-field model for polymer compaction by motors that actively extrude loops and turnover. The model establishes an upper bound of only ~ 10-fold for compaction by one-sided extrusion. Thus, it cannot be the sole mechanism of chromosome compaction. However, other, effectively two-sided mechanisms can achieve sufficient compaction.
Copyright
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
Posted November 21, 2018.
