2010/06/30 by Olivier Bénichou, O. Benichou, C. Chevalier +4 · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Physics and Astronomy · #Diffusion and Search Dynamics #Genomics and Chromatin Dynamics #RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms #cond-mat.stat-mech #q-bio.SC
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.106.038102
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 038102 (2011) · 4 pages, 4 figures, accepted version
openalex publication_date 2011/01/20 · arxiv created 2011/01/26 · arxiv updated 2015/05/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present a theoretical model of facilitated diffusion of proteins in the cell nucleus. This model, which takes into account the successive binding and unbinding events of proteins to DNA, relies on a fractal description of the chromatin which has been recently evidenced experimentally. Facilitated diffusion is shown quantitatively to be favorable for a fast localization of a target locus by a transcription factor and even to enable the minimization of the search time by tuning the affinity of the transcription factor with DNA. This study shows the robustness of the facilitated diffusion mechanism, invoked so far only for linear conformations of DNA.