PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Hang Zhang AU - XIAO-JUN TIAN AU - Abhishek Mukhopadhyay AU - Kenneth S Kim AU - Jianhua Xing TI - A statistical mechanics model for the collective epigenetic histone modification dynamics AID - 10.1101/001693 DP - 2014 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 001693 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2014/01/08/001693.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2014/01/08/001693.full AB - Epigenetic histone modifications play an important role in the maintenance of different cell phenotypes. The exact molecular mechanism for inheritance of the modification patterns over cell generations remains elusive. We construct a Potts-type model based on experimentally observed nearest-neighbor enzyme lateral interactions and nucleosome covalent modification state biased enzyme recruitment. The model can lead to effective nonlocal interactions among nucleosomes suggested in previous theoretical studies, and epigenetic memory is robustly inheritable against stochastic cellular processes.