Alexander Grosberg – NYU
Wednesday, February 8, 10:45AM (Zoom meeting starts at 10:30)
"Non-equilibrium phase transition, polar order, and coherent flows in the nucleus of a living cell"
Nucleus of a living cell houses a cell genome - a polymer called chromatin, which is a functional form of DNA. It is very long, e.g., 2 meters long for every human cell. Nucleus is also an arena of incessant energy-driven activity. Experiments show that chromatin undergoes large, several micron, scale motions sustained over long times of order seconds. In the talk, after reviewing the phenomenology, I will show how these flows may arise due to a phase transition in which chromatin-driving motors, such as RNA polymerase, form a polar ("ferromagnetic") order. The talk is based on the joint work with I.Eshghi and A.Zidovska.