Diffusing Polymers in Confined Microdomains and Estimation of Chromosomal Territory Sizes from Chromosome Capture Data

Is it possible to extract the size and structure of chromosomal territories (confined domain) from the encounter frequencies of chromosomal loci? To answer this question, we estimate the mean time for two monomers located on the same polymer to encounter, which we call the mean first encounter time in a confined microdomain (MFETC). We approximate the confined domain geometry by a harmonic potential well and obtain an asymptotic expression that agrees with Brownian simulations for the MFETC as a function of the polymer length, the radius of the confined domain, and the activation distance radius ε at which the two searching monomers meet. We illustrate the present approach using chromosome capture data for the encounter rate distribution of two loci depending on their distances along the DNA. We estimate the domain size that restricts the motion of one of these loci for chromosome II in yeast.