Structural Polymorphism of the Nucleosomal DNA and Implications for Protein Binding

Marathe, Arvind and Bansal, Manju (2009) Structural Polymorphism of the Nucleosomal DNA and Implications for Protein Binding. In: Journal of Biomolecular Structure & Dynamics, 26 (6). pp. 925-926.

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Abstract

A nucleosome forms a basic unit of the chromosome structure. A biologically relevant question is how much of the nucleosomal conformational space is accessible to protein-free DNA, and what proportion of the nucleosomal conformations are induced by bound histones. To investigate this, we have analysed high resolution xray crystal structure datasets of DNA in protein-free as well as protein-bound forms, and compared the dinucleotide step parameters for the two datasets with those for high resolution nucleosome structures. Our analysis shows that most of the dinucleotide step parameter values for the nucleosome structures lie within the range accessible to protein-free DNA, indirectly indicating that the histone core plays more of a stabilizing role. The nucleosome structures are observed to assume smooth and nearly planar curvature, implying that ‘normal’ B-DNA like parameters can give rise to a curved geometry at the gross structural level. Different nucleosome

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Journal of Biomolecular Structure & Dynamics
Publisher:	Adenine Press
Additional Information:	copyright of this article belongs to Adenine Press.
Department/Centre:	Division of Biological Sciences > Molecular Biophysics Unit
Date Deposited:	07 Jan 2010 09:49
Last Modified:	19 Sep 2010 05:35
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/21002

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