Simulation-based inference of yeast centromeres

The chromatin folding and the spatial arrangement of chromosomes in the cell playa crucial role in DNA replication and genes expression. An improper chromatinfolding could lead to malfunctions and, over time, diseases. For eukaryotes,centromeres are essential for proper chromosome segregation and folding. Despiteextensive research using de novo sequencing of genomes and annotation analysis,centromere locations in yeasts remain difficult to infer and are still unknown inmost species. Recently, genome-wide chromosome conformation capture coupledwith next-generation sequencing (Hi-C) has become one of the leading methodsto investigate chromosome structures. Some recent studies have used Hi-C datato give a point estimate of each centromere, but those approaches highly relyon a good pre-localization. Here, we present a novel approach that infers in astochastic manner the locations of all centromeres in budding yeast based on boththe experimental Hi-C map and simulated contact maps.