Biomechanical properties of chromatin in cancer and normal cells

在2019年，我们发表了一篇开创性的论文，表明染色质的机械特性 编码在组蛋白变体中，表观遗传学和结构上标志着 像着丝粒一样的基因座。自该工作以来，在该领域也发表了几篇论文 在全球基因组范围内研究这一现象。我们目前的工作试图 结合癌症和衰老表观基因组的生物物理问题， 染色质的拉伸、拥挤或其他性质的变化随着疾病而改变， 如果是这样，这些变化背后的因素是什么。然后，我们预计会问， 这些因子可以恢复染色质网络的完整性，从而抑制肿瘤的发生。 或老化相关的表型在核反应应变/应力。

In 2019, we published a seminal paper showing that mechanical properties of chromatin are encoded in the histone variants which epigenetically and structurally mark specialized loci like centromeres. Since that work, several papers have also been published in the field studying this phenomenon on a global genomic scale. Our current work attempts to bring together biophysical questions to the cancer and aging epigenome, to understand whether changes in stretching, crowding, or other properties of chromatin are altered with disease, and if so, which factors underlie these changes. We then anticipate asking whether reversal of such factors might restore integrity to the chromatin meshwork, thereby suppressing oncogenic or aging related phenotypes in the nuclear response to strain/stress.