Publication Date:
2014-04-26
Description:
The hierarchical packaging of eukaryotic chromatin plays a central role in transcriptional regulation and other DNA-related biological processes. Here, we report the 11-angstrom-resolution cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) structures of 30-nanometer chromatin fibers reconstituted in the presence of linker histone H1 and with different nucleosome repeat lengths. The structures show a histone H1-dependent left-handed twist of the repeating tetranucleosomal structural units, within which the four nucleosomes zigzag back and forth with a straight linker DNA. The asymmetric binding and the location of histone H1 in chromatin play a role in the formation of the 30-nanometer fiber. Our results provide mechanistic insights into how nucleosomes compact into higher-order chromatin fibers.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Song, Feng -- Chen, Ping -- Sun, Dapeng -- Wang, Mingzhu -- Dong, Liping -- Liang, Dan -- Xu, Rui-Ming -- Zhu, Ping -- Li, Guohong -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2014 Apr 25;344(6182):376-80. doi: 10.1126/science.1251413.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉National Laboratory of Biomacromolecules, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24763583" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Amino Acid Sequence
;
Animals
;
Chromatin/chemistry/metabolism/*ultrastructure
;
Cryoelectron Microscopy
;
DNA/chemistry/*ultrastructure
;
Histones/*chemistry/metabolism
;
Imaging, Three-Dimensional
;
Models, Molecular
;
Molecular Sequence Data
;
Nucleic Acid Conformation
;
Nucleosomes/*ultrastructure
;
Protein Conformation
;
Recombinant Proteins/chemistry/metabolism
;
Xenopus Proteins/chemistry
;
Xenopus laevis
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
Permalink
