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Autores principales: Olmeda, Fabrizio, Gupta, Misha, Bektas, Onurcan, Rulands, Steffen
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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Acceso en línea:https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.13216
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author Olmeda, Fabrizio
Gupta, Misha
Bektas, Onurcan
Rulands, Steffen
author_facet Olmeda, Fabrizio
Gupta, Misha
Bektas, Onurcan
Rulands, Steffen
contents DNA methylation is a primary layer of epigenetic modification that plays a pivotal role in the regulation of development, aging, and cancer. The concurrent activity of opposing enzymes that mediate DNA methylation and demethylation gives rise to a biochemical cycle and active turnover of DNA methylation. While the ensuing biochemical oscillations have been implicated in the regulation of cell differentiation, their functional role and spatio-temporal dynamics are, however, unknown. In this work, we demonstrate that chromatin-mediated coupling between these local biochemical cycles can lead to the emergence of phase-locked domains, regions of locally synchronized turnover activity, whose coarsening is arrested by genomic heterogeneity. We introduce a minimal model based on stochastic oscillators with constrained long-range and non-reciprocal interactions, shaped by the local chromatin organization. Through a combination of analytical theory and stochastic simulations, we predict both the degree of synchronization and the typical size of emergent phase-locked domains. We qualitatively test these predictions using single-cell sequencing data. Our results show that DNA methylation turnover exhibits surprisingly rich spatio-temporal patterns which may be used by cells to control cell differentiation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_13216
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Spatio-temporal patterns of active epigenetic turnover
Olmeda, Fabrizio
Gupta, Misha
Bektas, Onurcan
Rulands, Steffen
Biological Physics
DNA methylation is a primary layer of epigenetic modification that plays a pivotal role in the regulation of development, aging, and cancer. The concurrent activity of opposing enzymes that mediate DNA methylation and demethylation gives rise to a biochemical cycle and active turnover of DNA methylation. While the ensuing biochemical oscillations have been implicated in the regulation of cell differentiation, their functional role and spatio-temporal dynamics are, however, unknown. In this work, we demonstrate that chromatin-mediated coupling between these local biochemical cycles can lead to the emergence of phase-locked domains, regions of locally synchronized turnover activity, whose coarsening is arrested by genomic heterogeneity. We introduce a minimal model based on stochastic oscillators with constrained long-range and non-reciprocal interactions, shaped by the local chromatin organization. Through a combination of analytical theory and stochastic simulations, we predict both the degree of synchronization and the typical size of emergent phase-locked domains. We qualitatively test these predictions using single-cell sequencing data. Our results show that DNA methylation turnover exhibits surprisingly rich spatio-temporal patterns which may be used by cells to control cell differentiation.
title Spatio-temporal patterns of active epigenetic turnover
topic Biological Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.13216