The genome three-dimensional (3D) organization plays important, yet poorlyunderstood roles in gene regulation. Chromosomes assume multiple distinctconformations in relation to the expression status of resident genes andundergo dramatic alterations in higher order structure through the cellcycle. Despite advances in microscopy, a general technique to determine the3D conformation of chromatin has been lacking.

We developed a new methodfor the determination of the 3D conformation of chromatin domains in theinterphase nucleus, which combines 5C experiments with the computationalIntegrative Modeling Platform (IMP).
The general approach of our method,which has been applied to study the 3D conformation of the a-globin domainin the human genome [1] and the Caulobacter crescentus whole genome, opensthe field for comprehensive studies of the 3D conformation of chromosomaldomains and contributes to a more complete characterization of genomeregulation.

[1] D. Baù et al. Nat Struct Mol Biol 18 (2011) 107.