Pieter Hendrik Willem Van Der Hoek (SISSA, Trieste)

Circular bacterial DNA can release torsional stress and compactify through supercoiling, forming superhelical structures that often branch into tree-like configurations. I will present a computationally efficient modelling strategy for sampling genome-like polymers based on this tree-like geometry. This approach leverages a powerful Monte Carlo method that efficiently samples randomly branched trees and tightly wraps them with ring polymers. Its validity follows from exact counts of the accessible states of randomly branched polymers and tightly double-folded ring polymers in idealized settings, together with a consistent treatment of interactions at the tree level. In the last part of my talk, I will show that this approach enables us to obtain statistics that match experimental data over several orders of magnitude. Collaborators: Angelo Rosa (SISSA, Trieste), Ralf Everaers (ENS, Lyon), Elham Ghobadpour (ENS, Lyon).