Cécile-Marie Doyen, Fabien Montel, Thierry Gautier, Hervé Menoni, Cyril Claudet, Marlène Delacour-Larose, Dimitri Angelov, Ali Hamiche, Jan Bednar, Cendrine Faivre-Moskalenko, Philippe Bouvet, Stefan Dimitrov
The histone variant H2A.Bbd appeared to be associated with active chromatin, but how it functions is unknown. We have dissected the properties of nucleosome containing H2A.Bbd. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) and electron cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM) showed that the H2A.Bbd histone octamer organizes only approximately 130 bp of DNA, suggesting that 10 bp of each end of nucleosomal DNA are released from the octamer. In agreement with this, the entry/exit angle of the nucleosomal DNA ends formed an angle close to 180 degrees and the physico-chemical analysis pointed to a lower stability of the variant particle...
September 20, 2006: EMBO Journal