Today at 12pm CT! Janet Sorrells, PhD presents the Monthly Seminar on Physical Genomics: Biochemical, Metabolic, And Structural Profiling Of The Tissue Microenvironment With Computationally Accelerated Multimodal Nonlinear Optical Microscopy" live on Zoom. Register here: tinyurl.com/3zhzu57j

Tomorrow! The Monthly Seminar on Physical Genomics features Dr. Vasundhara Agrawal, CPGE alumnus and Applications Manager for Spatial Biology Image Analysis at Leica Microsystems, discussing her path from academia to industry. #northwestern #leica Registration is free at: tinyurl.com/2rw8n7bt

Join us at 12pm CT tomorrow, May 29, as Michael Shelley PhD presents the Monthly Seminar on Physical Genomics: "Modeling Chromatin as an Active Polymer Melt". Registration is free but required at tinyurl.com/2rw8n7bt #chromatin #genomics #northwestern #polymer #physics #nyu #cpge #nih #nsf

Next Friday April 24 @ 12pm CT, Dr. Harmit Malik presents the Monthly Seminar on Physical Genomics: "Genetic Conflicts Drive The Unexpected Rapid Evolution Of Essential Chromatin Proteins", live on Zoom. Registration is free, but required at tinyurl.com/2rw8n7bt #chromatin #genomics #proteins #dna

Today @ 12pm CT! Dr. Javier Rodriguez-Casariego presents the Monthly Seminar on Physical Genomics: "Epigenetic Mechanisms Of Rapid Environmental Plasticity In Reef-Building Corals", live on Zoom. Join us! Registration is free, but required at tinyurl.com/2rw8n7bt #epigenetics #corals #genome

Today at 12pm CT, Prof. Steve Henikoff presents the Monthly Seminar on Physical Genomics: "Histone Overexpression In Cancer" live on Zoom. Join us! Registration is free at tinyurl.com/2rw8n7bt #northwestern #cancer #genomics #research #chromatin #dna #epigenetics #science #research

Today at 12pm CT! The Monthly Seminar on Physical Genomics featuring Taekjip Ha, PhD of Harvard Medical School: "DNA Mechanics And Nucleosome Condensability As Biophysical Backdrop Of Genome Functions" Register for free at: tinyurl.com/3zhzu57j #genomics #chromatin #dna #biophysics #biology

Tomorrow at 12pm CT! The Monthly Seminar on Physical Genomics featuring Taekjip Ha, PhD of Harvard Medical School: "DNA Mechanics And Nucleosome Condensability As Biophysical Backdrop Of Genome Functions" Register for free at: tinyurl.com/3zhzu57j #genomics #chromatin #dna #biophysics #biology

Today at 12pm CT, Wendy Bickmore, PhD presents the Monthly Seminar on Physical Genomics live on Zoom: "Chromatin Folding And Gene Activation: From The Nucleosome To Transcription Hubs" Registration is free. Join us! tinyurl.com/f9njvnyu #chromatin #genomics #genes #biology #dna #transcription

This Friday @ 12pm CT, Prof. Anja Groth of the University of Copenhagen presents the Monthly Seminar on Physical Genomics: "Epigenetic Cell Memory - How Cells Copy Their Epigenome", live on Zoom! Registration is free at tinyurl.com/5t59y8kj #northwestern #chromatin #genomics #biology #dna #bio

Coming up at 12pm CT today! Travis Craddock gives the Monthly Seminar on Physical Genomics live on Zoom: "Quantum Spin Dynamics in Biology: Weak Magnetic Field and Isotope Effects from Microtubules to Genome Regulation" Free registration at: tinyurl.com/3mhyseyr #quantum #biology #chromatin #dna

Coming up at 12pm CT today, the Physical Genomics Training Program Research Showcase live on Zoom! Three of our PhD trainees will discuss their exciting research projects - join us and experience the breakthrough science happening at CPGE! Registration is free at: tinyurl.com/yj5v8y85

CPGE in Northwestern News: New strategy doubles chemo effectiveness in treatment-resistant cancer: restoring cellular memory prevents cancer cells’ ability to adapt to evade treatment #cancer #chemo #chromatin #chemotherapy #northwestern #genomics news.northwestern.edu/stories/2025...

Today at 12 noon CT, Dawn Chen, PhD presents the Monthly Seminar on Physical Genomics: Computational Enhanced Multicontrast Imaging of Organoids and In Vivo Mouse Brain Live on Zoom, register at tinyurl.com/mr2smffd #imaging #northwestern #biology #AI #microscopy

Today @ 12pm CT, Prof. Kristy Stengel of Albert Einstein College of Medicine presents the Monthly Seminar on Physical Genomics: "Rapid Transcription Factor Degradation Reveals Mechanisms of Gene Regulation", live on Zoom. Join us! Registration is free at tinyurl.com/2m9jayet

For those on NU's Evanston campus, Roger Kamm of MIT will give a public lecture this Thursday afternoon: "Complex In Vitro Systems To Study Neurovascular Function In Health And Disease" Join us @ 1:30pm on 5/15 in Ryan Hall room 4003. No remote viewing - refreshments will be served!

Join us on Zoom Friday May 30 @ 12pm CT for the Monthly Seminar on Physical Genomics, featuring Prof. Kristy Stengel of Albert Einstein College of Medicine: "Rapid Transcription Factor Degradation Reveals Mechanisms of Gene Regulation" Registration is free at tinyurl.com/2m9jayet #chromatin #dna

Starting in 1 hour! Samantha Pattenden, PhD presents the Monthly Seminar on Physical Genomics: "Development of Technologies That Accelerate Cancer Biomarker and Therapeutic Target Discovery" Live on Zoom @ 12pm CT - register at tinyurl.com/bdh992n5 #northwestern #chromatin #3Dgenome #genomics

Attending the Symposium on Physical Genomics on April 25 in Chicago? Submit an abstract for the symposium poster session by April 15 to share your research and network with an international audience of world-class interdisciplinary researchers from academia and industry. #chromatin #microscopy

CPGE hosts an online archive of talks from world-class researchers on topics such as chromatin biology, super-resolution imaging, computational genomics, modeling, epigenetics, 3D genome structure, transcription and much more. Check it out at: physicalgenomics.northwestern.edu/education/vi...

Starting in one hour! Lothar Schermelleh presents the Monthly Seminar on Physical Genomics: Quantitative Super-Resolution Microscopy to Reveal Insights into Mesoscale Chromatin Organization Live on Zoom, today @ 12pm CT Free registration at: tinyurl.com/2rb7yzfz #chromatin #microscopy #genomics

Registration is now open for the 2025 Symposium on Physical Genomics, taking place Friday April 25 on Northwestern's Chicago campus - details at the link below. Planning on attending? Submit an abstract for the lunchtime poster session! #chromatin physicalgenomics.northwestern.edu/news-events/...

Coming up at 12pm CT today! Andrew Stephens, PhD will discuss research from his lab at the University of Massachusetts as he presents the Monthly Seminar on Physical Genomics, live on Zoom Registration is free at tinyurl.com/mr2s7fpy #chromatin #northwestern #genomics #epigenetics #umass #dna

New in Journal of Cell Science: Using novel spectroscopic and localization microscopy techniques, CPGE researchers show that chromatin within blebs is associated with a fragmented higher-order chromatin structure. journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/... #chromatin #3Dgenome #epigenetics #dna #cpge

Using this technology, we found that cohesin does not regulate mature chromatin domains. Cohesin plays a role in domain formation by allocating DNA on the surface of well-packed domains to form nascent domains that may later mature due to other biophysical processes into well-packed, large domains.

We reasoned that inhibiting HDACs, which promote heterochromatin formation, would lead to an increase in small, poorly packed euchromatic domains, i.e., nascent domains. Again using 3D Chromatin EM, we found a dramatic increase in nascent and small, well-packed domains after inhibiting HDACs.

TADs & loop domains have a similar distribution of PTMs after RAD21 depletion. The gain of H3K9me3 within TADs and loops, along with our observations that RAD21 is concentrated in DNA-poor regions & degradation leads to loss of nascent domains, suggests that cohesin functions via allocation of DNA.

This led us to conclude that TADs and chromatin domains aren't the same thing. To confirm, we reasoned that if TADs and loops are manifestations of packing domains we should see increased global accessibility. Publicly available data before and after RAD21 degradation shows no such change.

We hypothesized that this unique cohesin-mediated structural change in nascent chromatin domains may be caused by cohesin activity on the surface of mature chromatin domains. Using SMLM to image RAD21 and EDU-labeled chromatin, we found RAD21 primarily localized in DNA-poor areas between domains.

However, this observation came with a major caveat. Upon further analysis, we learned that while well-packed, large, mature chromatin domains were intact, many low-density nascent domains were lost after RAD21 depletion. In fact, nearly half of these nascent domains were lost.