S. Gunawardena and M. Rykowski. We have direct evidence that during interphase regions of chromosomes move in a directed fashion, independently over long distances.
All genes show evidence of movement, each gene moving in a distinct pattern.
In contrast, genes near the telomere do not move towards the centromere, but instead, elongate along the nuclear axis. Since gene movement occurs in both active and inactive genes, we propose that the motion we observe is independent of replication, transcription and changes in nuclear shape. Because of the rate of motion, it is unlikely that gene movement is a result of random diffusion. Further, since individual genes on the same chromosome appear to move independently, the movement is unlikely to be mediated by the centromeres. Therefore we suggest that the gene motion we observe is the result of a novel mechanism for interphase chromosomal movement.