Nucleosomes in gene regulation: theoretical approaches

This work reviews current theoretical approaches of biophysics and bioinformatics for the description of nucleosome arrangements in chromatin and transcription factor binding to nucleosomal organized DNA. The role of nucleosomes in gene regulation is discussed from molecular-mechanistic and biological point of view. In addition to classical problems of this field, actual questions of epigenetic regulation are discussed. The authors selected for discussion what seem to be the most interesting concepts and hypotheses. Mathematical approaches are described in a simplified language to attract attention to the most important directions of this field

Finite-time destruction of entanglement and non-locality by environmental influences

Entanglement and non-locality are non-classical global characteristics of quantum states important to the foundations of quantum mechanics. Recent investigations have shown that environmental noise, even when it is entirely local in influence, can destroy both of these properties in finite time despite giving rise to full quantum state decoherence only in the infinite time limit. These investigations, which have been carried out in a range of theoretical and experimental situations, are reviewed here.Comment: 27 pages, 6 figures, review article to appear in Foundations of Physic