Nucleosome chiral transition under positive torsional stress in single chromatin fibers.

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Bancaud, Aurélien | Wagner, Gaudeline | Conde E Silva, Natalia | Lavelle, Christophe | Wong, Hua | Mozziconacci, Julien | Barbi, Maria | Sivolob, Andrei | Le Cam, Eric | Mouawad, Liliane | Viovy, Jean-Louis | Victor, Jean-Marc | Prunell, Ariel

Edité par CCSD ; Cell Press -

International audience. Using magnetic tweezers to investigate the mechanical response of single chromatin fibers, we show that fibers submitted to large positive torsion transiently trap positive turns at a rate of one turn per nucleosome. A comparison with the response of fibers of tetrasomes (the [H3-H4](2) tetramer bound with approximately 50 bp of DNA) obtained by depletion of H2A-H2B dimers suggests that the trapping reflects a nucleosome chiral transition to a metastable form built on the previously documented right-handed tetrasome. In view of its low energy, <8 kT, we propose that this transition is physiologically relevant and serves to break the docking of the dimers on the tetramer that in the absence of other factors exerts a strong block against elongation of transcription by the main RNA polymerase.

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