Modelling supercoiling and epigenetics in DNA and chromatin

The project will cover different aspects of the physics of DNA. Our aim, in the first part of the project, will be to spotlight how supercoiling can influence transcription and then how it can regulate gene expression. Indeed several experiments suggest that DNA supercoiling and transcription are intimately connected each other. In the second part, we will build on existing models and codes which describe DNA at various length scales or levels of coarse graining in order to study how DNA folds up in the 3-dimensional space inside a living cell. In the final part of the project, we will study the spreading dynamics of epigenetic marks in chromatin.