Elucidating Internucleosome Interactions and the Roles of Histone Tails

Authors

Steven C. HowellFollow
Kurt Andresen, Gettysburg CollegeFollow
Isabel Jimenez-UsecheFollow
Chongli YuanFollow
Xiangyun Qiu, Cornell UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-2013

Department 1

Physics

Abstract

The nucleosome is the first level of genome organization and regulation in eukaryotes where negatively charged DNA is wrapped around largely positively charged histone proteins. Interaction between nucleosomes is dominated by electrostatics at long range and guided by specific contacts at short range, particularly involving their flexible histone tails. We have thus quantified how internucleosome interactions are modulated by salts (KCl, MgCl₂) and histone tail deletions (H3, H4 N-terminal), using small-angle x-ray scattering and theoretical modeling. We found that measured effective charges at low salts are ∼1/5th of the theoretically predicted renormalized charges and that H4 tail deletion suppresses the attraction at high salts to a larger extent than H3 tail deletion.

Copyright Note

This is the publisher's version of the work. This publication appears in Gettysburg College's institutional repository by permission of the copyright owner for personal use, not for redistribution.

DOI

10.1016/j.bpj.2013.05.021

Recommended Citation

Howell, Steven C. et al. "Elucidating Internucleosome Interactions and the Roles of Histone Tails." Biophysical Journal 105.1 (July 2013), 194-199.

Required Publisher's Statement

Original version is available from the publisher at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006349513005778