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PMID: 10618382 Published · ppublish English Journal Article Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S. Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

Pulling a single chromatin fiber reveals the forces that maintain its higher-order structure.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America ·Vol. 97 ·No. 1 ·2000-01-04 ·Pages 127-32

Cui Y, Bustamante C

Abstract

Single chicken erythrocyte chromatin fibers were stretched and released at room temperature with force-measuring laser tweezers. In low ionic strength, the stretch-release curves reveal a process of continuous deformation with little or no internucleosomal attraction. A persistence length of 30 nm and a stretch modulus of approximately 5 pN is determined for the fibers. At forces of 20 pN and higher, the fibers are modified irreversibly, probably through the mechanical removal of the histone cores from native chromatin. In 40-150 mM NaCl, a distinctive condensation-decondensation transition appears between 5 and 6 pN, corresponding to an internucleosomal attraction energy of approximately 2.0 kcal/mol per nucleosome. Thus, in physiological ionic strength the fibers possess a dynamic structure in which the fiber locally interconverting between "open" and "closed" states because of thermal fluctuations.

MeSH Terms
Animals Chickens Chromatin/chemistry Elasticity Erythrocytes/chemistry Histones/chemistry Nucleosomes/chemistry Osmolar Concentration Polystyrenes Sodium Chloride/pharmacology Stress, Mechanical Thermodynamics
Chemicals
Chromatin Histones Nucleosomes Polystyrenes Sodium Chloride
Authors & Affiliations
2 authors, click to expand affiliations / ORCID
Cui Y
Department of Molecular Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
Bustamante C
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Article Info
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Abbr.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
ISSN
0027-8424
DOI
10.1073/pnas.97.1.127
Published
2000-01-04
Pages
127-32
Language
English
Region
United States
NLM ID
7505876
PMCID
PMC26627
Subset
IM
Grants
NIGMS NIH HHS · R01 GM032543 · United States
NIGMS NIH HHS · R37 GM032543 · United States
NIGMS NIH HHS · GM-32543 · United States
External Links
PubMed source DOI: 10.1073/pnas.97.1.127 PMC Full Text View journal details
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