New insights into nucleosome positioning

RAZVAN V CHEREJI; JOSEFINA OCAMPO; TARA L BURKE; DAVID J CLARK

San Antonio

Congreso; American Physical Society Meeting; 2015

American Physical Society

Nucleosomes pack the DNA within the very crowded eukaryotic nuclei, but they also control the access to regulatory regions along the genome. We study the relationship between nucleosome organization and transcriptional regulation. In vivo, nucleosome form regular arrays on the gene bodies and a nucleosome-depleted region near transcription start sites. By in vitro nucleosome reconstitution, we show that DNA sequence has a minor role in generating this configuration, and we identify the major determinants of nucleosome organization. Non-histone proteins bind to gene promoters and compete with histone binding, creating nucleosome depleted regions; chromatin remodelers organize the nucleosomes in regular arrays; and transcription disrupts the arrays of nucleosomes. We also study rigorous statistical mechanics models which explain the nucleosome phasing relative to the transcription start sites observed in vivo, and we propose a model for the ATP-dependent active nucleosome positioning by chromatin remodelers