Afanasyeva K. DNA loop domain organization in cells at different functional states

The thesis is focused on the principles of spatial organization of DNA loop domains in eukaryotic cell nuclei and changes of this organization at different functional states of the cells. To investigate this problem a method for analyzing the chromatin loop domain organization, which is based on the single cell electrophoresis (the comet assay), was developed. Physical mechanisms of the DNA migration were analyzed in details, and it has been proven that DNA loops that migrate from nucleoids (lysed cells) during electrophoresis correspond to the chromatin loop domains in living cells. The analysis of the kinetics of the electrophoretic track formation allows one to characterize a spatial location of the loops in the cell nuclei, to determine the contour length and the topological state of the loops, to estimate their linear density in nucleoids.