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  • Featured in Physics
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Brownian Bridging of Chromatin States in Leukemic Cells

M. Calero1,2,3,*, E. del Arco4,*, M. Amores-Sánchez4, D. Herráez-Aguilar5, E. García-Sánchez6, A. González-Murillo6, J. Lalchandani6, N. Caselli7, J. Fernández-Castillo7 et al.

A. Caamaño4, M. Ramírez-Orellana6,8,9,†, I. Mora-Jiménez4,‡, and F. Monroy1,7,§

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • †Contact author: manuel.ramirez@salud.madrid.org
  • ‡Contact author: inmaculada.mora@urjc.es
  • §Contact author: monroy@ucm.es
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PRX Life 4, 033013 – Published 12 August, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/n2tk-q6gv

Abstract

Chromatin mobility in living interphase nuclei provides a dynamical readout of genome regulation. From time-resolved trajectories of chromatin granules in primary acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) samples (one B-ALL, one T-ALL), leukemic cell lines (U266, Jurkat), and healthy donor T lymphocytes, we resolve rare but reproducible transitions between extreme mobility states. We quantify these events with Brownian-bridge ensembles, i.e., trajectories conditioned on crossings between low- and high-mobility quartiles. Despite their low frequency, crossings reveal strong polarity: activation (Q1→Q4) concentrates on a superlinear, ballistic-like ridge, whereas reconfinement (Q4→Q1) returns more slowly toward confinement. The scarcity of extreme events is comparable in magnitude to reported bursting fractions, motivating future joint live-imaging tests that directly link mobility bridges to transcriptional state. These asymmetric pathways yield a compact dynamical signature of disrupted confinement and lineage-dependent nuclear deregulation in ALL, and generate testable predictions for cohort-level validation.

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synopsis

Cancer Sets DNA in Motion

Published 12 August, 2026

A microscope video analysis has provided new details about molecular motion inside the nuclei of cancer cells.

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PRX Life 4, 033013– Published 12 August, 2026
  • Received 9 March 2026
  • Accepted 12 June 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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