%0 Journal Article %T Relevance and limitations of crowding, fractal, and polymer models to describe nuclear architecture. %+ Institut de Génétique et Développement de Rennes (IGDR) %+ Régulation et dynamique des génomes %+ Équipe Nano Ingénierie et Intégration des Systèmes (LAAS-N2IS) %+ Laboratoire de Physique Théorique de la Matière Condensée (LPTMC) %A Huet, Sébastien %A Lavelle, Christophe %A Ranchon, Hubert %A Carrivain, Pascal %A Victor, Jean-Marc %A Bancaud, Aurélien %Z SH was supported by funds from the Agence National de la Recherche (JCJC-SVSE2-2011, ChromaTranscript project) and from the European Union (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-CIG, ChromaTranscript project) %< avec comité de lecture %Z Rapport LAAS n° 13278 %J International Review of Cell and Molecular Biology %V 307 %P 443-79 %8 2014 %D 2014 %R 10.1016/B978-0-12-800046-5.00013-8 %M 24380602 %K Chromatin %K Chromosome %K DNA %K Fractal model %K Molecular crowding %K Nuclear architecture %K Polymer model %Z Life Sciences [q-bio]Journal articles %X Chromosome architecture plays an essential role for all nuclear functions, and its physical description has attracted considerable interest over the last few years among the biophysics community. These researches at the frontiers of physics and biology have been stimulated by the demand for quantitative analysis of molecular biology experiments, which provide comprehensive data on chromosome folding, or of live cell imaging experiments that enable researchers to visualize selected chromosome loci in living or fixed cells. In this review our goal is to survey several nonmutually exclusive models that have emerged to describe the folding of DNA in the nucleus, the dynamics of proteins in the nucleoplasm, or the movements of chromosome loci. We focus on three classes of models, namely molecular crowding, fractal, and polymer models, draw comparisons, and discuss their merits and limitations in the context of chromosome structure and dynamics, or nuclear protein navigation in the nucleoplasm. Finally, we identify future challenges in the roadmap to a unified model of the nuclear environment. %G English %L hal-00979005 %U https://univ-rennes.hal.science/hal-00979005 %~ UPMC %~ UNIV-TLSE2 %~ UNIV-TLSE3 %~ UNIV-RENNES1 %~ CNRS %~ INSA-TOULOUSE %~ LAAS %~ IFR140 %~ IGDR %~ LPTMC %~ UT1-CAPITOLE %~ STATS-UR1 %~ LAAS-N2IS %~ IGDR-SPARTE %~ LAAS-NANO-INGENIERIE-ET-INTEGRATION %~ UR1-UFR-SVE %~ UR1-HAL %~ UR1-SDV %~ UPMC_POLE_2 %~ TEST-UNIV-RENNES %~ TEST-UR-CSS %~ UNIV-RENNES %~ INSA-GROUPE %~ SORBONNE-UNIVERSITE %~ SU-SCIENCES %~ UR1-BIO-SA %~ ALLIANCE-SU %~ TOULOUSE-INP %~ UNIV-UT3 %~ UT3-INP %~ UT3-TOULOUSEINP