Abstract

In nuclei of eukaryotic cells, DNA molecules are tightly packed up to a concentration level of several hundreds of mg/ml. At high concentration, in order to decrease the intermolecular volume the DNA strands self-organize and form domains containing molecules oriented along preferential directions. These self-organizing properties give rise to various liquid crystalline phases, similar to the process of physiologic DNA condensation [1]. Liquid crystalline phases were observed in concentrated DNA solutions, but also in nucleosome-like particles or plasmids solutions [2-4]. Besides their biologic implication, these self-organized structures may serve as a simple model for the structural study of DNA higher order organization schemes and as a first approach mimicking the complex chromatin topology.

© 2009 IEEE