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SUMMARY:The Loops of Life
DTSTART:20260707T140000Z
DTEND:20260707T160000Z
DTSTAMP:20260615T044500Z
UID:indico-event-52128@agenda.infn.it
DESCRIPTION:Speakers: Michael Rubinstein (Duke University)\n\nSoft matter 
 science is a highly interdisciplinary field\, spanning physics\, chemistry
 \, and biology\,that focuses on materials (e.g.\, polymers\, gels\, foams\
 , colloids\, liquid crystals) that are easilydeformed by thermal fluctuati
 ons or weak external stresses. One of its objectives is to explainhow biol
 ogy works based on physics concepts. In this lecture\, I will provide a ph
 ysicist’sexplanation of how different cells in our body\, while containi
 ng identical genetic information\, areforced to “read” different genes
  and perform completely different functions. The puzzle is thatDNA in the 
 nucleus of every cell is an astronomically long linear polymer\, and one o
 f the basicconcepts of polymer physics is that long linear polymers in a d
 ense state have fractaldimensionality D=2 and in 3-dimensional space are h
 eavily overlapping and highly entangled. Iwill explain how the loop extrus
 ion activity of proteins\, called cohesins\, forces sections of linearDNA 
 into topologically associated domains (TADs) with apparent fractal dimensi
 on D=4. Thisphysical model suggests that activity packs DNA (chromatin) in
  the cell nucleus into a non-equilibrium steady-state of D=2 necklaces com
 posed of D=4 beads. Four-dimensional objects donot overlap in three-dimens
 ional space. Various cells in our body differ in specific locations ofthes
 e four-dimensional beads (TADs) along the chromosomes and therefore read (
 transcribe) different genes. This physical model suggests new epigenetic w
 ays of treating diseases.\n\nhttps://agenda.infn.it/event/52128/
LOCATION:Aula Amaldi (Dipartimento di Fisica-Ed.G.Marconi)
URL:https://agenda.infn.it/event/52128/
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