TY - JOUR T1 - Transcription-induced active forces suppress chromatin motion by inducing a transient disorder-to-order transition JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/2022.04.30.490180 SP - 2022.04.30.490180 AU - Sucheol Shin AU - Hyun Woo Cho AU - Guang Shi AU - D. Thirumalai Y1 - 2022/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/05/01/2022.04.30.490180.abstract N2 - Recent experiments have shown that the mobility of human interphase chromosome decreases during transcription, and increases upon inhibiting transcription, a finding that is counter-intuitive because it is thought that the active mechanical force (F) generated by RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) on chromatin would render it more open and mobile. We use a polymer model to investigate how F, derived from transcriptional activity, affects the dynamical properties of chromatin. The movements of the loci in the gene-rich region are suppressed in an intermediate range of F, and are enhanced at small and large F values. In the intermediate F, the bond length between consecutive loci increases, becoming commensurate with the location of the minimum in the attractive interaction between the active loci in the chromatin. This results in a disorder-to-order transition, leading to the decreased mobility during transcription. Our results suggest that transient ordering of the loci in the generich region might be a mechanism for nucleating a dynamic network involving transcription factors, RNAPII, and chromatin.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. ER -