The role of chromatin conformations in diffusional transport of chromatin-binding proteins: Cartesian lattice simulations

In this paper, a lattice model for the diffusional transport of chromatin-binding particles in the interphase cell nucleus is proposed. Sliding effects are studied in dense networks of chromatin fibers created by three different methods: Randomly distributed, noninterconnected obstacles, a random walk chain model with an attractive step potential, and a self-avoiding random walk chain model with a hard repulsive core and attractive surroundings. By comparing a discrete and continuous version of the random walk chain model, we demonstrate that lattice discretization does not alter the diffusion of chromatin-binding particles. The influence of conformational properties of the fiber network on the particle sliding is investigated in detail while varying occupation volume, sliding probability, chain length, and persistence length. It is observed that adjacency of the monomers, the excluded volume effect incorporated in the self-avoiding random walk model, and the persistence length affect the chromatin-binding particle diffusion. It is demonstrated that sliding particles sense local chain structures. When plotting the diffusion coefficient as a function of the accessible volume for diffusing particles, the data fall onto master curves depending on the persistence length. However, once intersegment transfer is involved, chromatin-binding proteins no longer perceive local chain structures.