Tracking the mechanical dynamics of human embryonic stem cell chromatin

Abstract

Background: A plastic chromatin structure has emerged as fundamental to the self-renewal and pluripotent capacity of embryonic stem (ES) cells. Direct measurement of chromatin dynamics in vivo is, however, challenging as high spatiotemporal resolution is required. Here, we present a new tracking-based method which can detect high frequency chromatin movement and quantify the mechanical dynamics of chromatin in live cells. Results: We use this method to study how the mechanical properties of chromatin movement in human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) are modulated spatiotemporally during differentiation into cardiomyocytes (CM). Notably, we find that pluripotency is associated with a highly disc..