Skip Navigation



Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access published online on July 13, 2009
Nucleic Acids Research, doi:10.1093/nar/gkp574
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow Print PDF (394K) Freely available
Right arrow Screen PDF (416K) Freely available
Right arrow Supplementary Data
Right arrowOA All Versions of this Article:
37/16/5309    most recent
gkp574v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Commercial Re-use Guidelines
for Open Access NAR Content
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Caserta, M.
Right arrow Articles by Travers, A.
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Caserta, M.
Right arrow Articles by Travers, A.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© 2009 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Gene Regulation, Chromatin and Epigenetics

A translational signature for nucleosome positioning in vivo

Micaela Caserta1,2, Eleonora Agricola1,2, Mark Churcher3, Edwige Hiriart3, Loredana Verdone1,2, Ernesto Di Mauro1,2 and Andrew Travers3,4,*

1Fondazione Istituto Pasteur-Fondazione Cenci Bolognetti, c/o Dipartimento di Genetica e Biologia Molecolare, 2Istituto Biologia e Patologia Molecolari del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Università ‘La Sapienza’, 00185 Rome, Italy, 3MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 0QH, UK and 4Fondation Pierre-Gilles de Gennes de la Recherche, c/o LBPA, École Normale Supérieure de Cachan, 94235 Cachan, France

*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +33 1 47 40 77 68; Email: aat{at}mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk

Received March 9, 2009. Revised June 4, 2009. Accepted June 22, 2009.

In vivo nucleosomes often occupy well-defined preferred positions on genomic DNA. An important question is to what extent these preferred positions are directly encoded by the DNA sequence itself. We derive here from in vivo positions, accurately mapped by partial micrococcal nuclease digestion, a translational positioning signal that identifies the approximate midpoint of DNA bound by a histone octamer. This midpoint is, on average, highly A/T rich (~73%) and, in particular, the dinucleotide TpA occurs preferentially at this and other outward-facing minor grooves. We conclude that in this set of sequences the sequence code for DNA bending and nucleosome positioning differs from the other described sets and we suggest that the enrichment of AT-containing dinucleotides at the centre is required for local untwisting. We show that this signature is preferentially associated with nucleosomes flanking promoter regions and suggest that it contributes to the establishment of gene-specific nucleosome arrays.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.