Very recently, conspicuous effort has been dedicated to describing and predicting the three-dimensional organization of chromosomes inside the eukaryotic nucleus by generic polymer models [1].

In my talk, I will discuss recent results showing that chromosome structure and dynamics can be quantitatively described by a polymer model of decondensing chromosomes which takes into account only minimal physical ingredients like density, stiffness and topology conservation of the chromatin fiber [2-4].

Then, I will present some recent results concerning how this model can be employed in order to investigate the origin of the visco-elastic properties of the nucleus [5].

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[1] A. Rosa and C. Zimmer, Int. Rev. Cell & Mol. Biol. 307, 275 (2014).
[2] A. Rosa and R. Everaers, Plos Comput. Biol. 4, e1000153 (2008).
[3] A. Rosa et al., Biophys. J. 98, 2410 (2010).
[4] A. Rosa and R. Everaers, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 118302 (2014).
[5] M. Valet and A. Rosa, J. Chem. Phys. 141, 245101 (2014).