Dictyostelium discoideum is a social amoeba famous for its pseudo-multicellularity: to multiply, its cells aggregate into fruiting body that produces spores. We call this fascinating organism simply as “Dicty”.
It turns out this organism has pretty unique genome organization into loops that coincide with the convergent genes positions.
Colleagues from the Institute of Gene Biology performed Hi-C and I designed polymer simulations that recapitulate the locations and strength of the loops between convergent genes. The key to these simulations was extruder that interacts with moving polymerase at the expressing genes.
Interestingly, this organization may play a regulatory role, which is remarkable considering that lower eukaryotes, such as amoebas, are generally not thought to have long-range gene regulation.
I was doing this work as a PhD student, and my ex-colleagues have recently finalized a preprint on studying three-dimensional genome organization of Dicty. More about peculiar Dicty chromatin organization:
