Reconstruction of the chromatin 3D conformation from single cell Hi-C data

Abstract

In the last decade, experimental methods for determining the spatial organization of chromatin have been actively developed. One of the known classes of such methods is 3C-based methods. Hi-C experiments, which are a full-genome variation of 3C-based methods, allow obtaining contact maps for a population of 10 million cells with an accuracy of 500 base pairs. In parallel with the improvement of experiments, theoretical models were created to describe the spatial organization of chromatin. These models include: crumpled (fractal) globule, SBS model, loop extrusion model and others. All this models describe chromatin conformation well on different spatial scales. Another task is the chromatin conformation recovery from the experimental Hi-C contact map obtained for the cell population. This task is incorrectly set because it has many solutions. In addition, the individual features of the spatial organization of chromatin in individual cells are not visible due to averaging.