Polymer model with long-range interactions: analysis and applications to the chromatin structure

Chromatin inside the cell nucleus consists of the DNA and its hierarchy of interacting molecules, which can be modeled as a complex polymer. To describe the chromatin dynamic, we develop and analyze here a polymer model that accounts for long-range interactions and not just those between the closest neighbors as in the Rouse polymer model. Our construction of the polymer model allows us to recover the local interaction between monomers from the anomalous diffusion exponent, which can be directly measured experimentally. We compute asymptotically for this polymer model the cross-correlation function for a given monomer and the mean time for a loop to be formed. Finally, we discuss some possible applications for interpretation of chromosome capture data.