posted on 2021-06-25, 15:37authored byBeatrice
W. Soh, Patrick S. Doyle
A kinetoplast is a planar network
of catenated DNA rings with topology
that resembles that of chain mail armor. In this work, we use single-molecule
experiments to probe the conformation of kinetoplasts confined to
slits. We find that the in-plane size of kinetoplasts increases with
degree of confinement, akin to the slitlike confinement of linear
DNA. The change in kinetoplast size with channel height is consistent
with the scaling prediction from a Flory-type approach for a 2D polymer.
With an increase in extent of confinement, the kinetoplasts appear
to unfold and take on more uniform circular shapes, in contrast to
the broad range of conformations observed for kinetoplasts in bulk.