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Nikitina T, Guiblet WM, Cui F, Zhurkin VB. Histone N-tails modulate sequence-specific positioning of nucleosomes. BIORXIV : THE PREPRINT SERVER FOR BIOLOGY 2023:2023.11.30.569460. [PMID: 38076910 PMCID: PMC10705531 DOI: 10.1101/2023.11.30.569460] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/17/2023]
Abstract
The precise mechanisms governing sequence-dependent positioning of nucleosomes on DNA remain unknown in detail. Existing algorithms, taking into account the sequence-dependent deformability of DNA and its interactions with the histone globular domains, predict rotational setting of only 65% of human nucleosomes mapped in vivo. To uncover novel factors responsible for the nucleosome positioning, we analyzed potential involvement of the histone N-tails in this process. To this aim, we reconstituted the H2A/H4 N-tailless nucleosomes on human BRCA1 DNA (~100 kb) and compared their positions and sequences with those of the wild-type nucleosomes. In the case of H2A tailless nucleosomes, the AT content of DNA sequences is changed locally at superhelical location (SHL) ±4, while maintaining the same rotational setting as their wild-type counterparts. Conversely, the H4 tailless nucleosomes display widespread changes of the AT content near SHL ±1 and SHL ±2, where the H4 N-tails interact with DNA. Furthermore, a substantial number of H4 tailless nucleosomes exhibit rotational setting opposite to that of the wild-type nucleosomes. Thus, our findings strongly suggest that the histone N-tails are operative in selection of nucleosome positions, which may have wide-ranging implications for epigenetic modulation of chromatin states.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tatiana Nikitina
- National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, US
| | - Wilfried M. Guiblet
- National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, US
| | - Feng Cui
- Thomas H. Gosnell School of Life Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, USA
| | - Victor B. Zhurkin
- National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, US
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A study of strong nucleosomes in the human genome. iScience 2022; 25:104593. [PMID: 35789840 PMCID: PMC9249913 DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.104593] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/09/2021] [Revised: 03/03/2022] [Accepted: 06/08/2022] [Indexed: 11/30/2022] Open
Abstract
Micrococcal nuclease (MNase) is widely used to map nucleosomes. However, nucleosomes are highly dynamic and susceptible to experimental conditions, resulting in extreme variability across nucleosome maps, which complicates the generation of accurate nucleosome organization data. We mapped nucleosomes from different individuals using improved MNase-seq. The improvements included setting different digestion levels (low, medium, high) and naked DNA correction to remove the noise caused by experimental manipulation and comparing maps to obtain the accurate position and occupancy of strong nucleosomes (SNs) in the whole genome. In addition, the characteristics of SNs were further excavated. SNs were enriched in Alu elements and near the centromere of Chr12. SNs contain some specific sequences, and the GC content of SNs is different from that of dynamic nucleosomes. The findings suggest that nucleosome location in the genome and the DNA sequence may affect nucleosome stability. Naked DNA correction improved the accuracy of nucleosome map in partial digestion Level of MNase digestion has effects on nucleosome organization A type of strong nucleosomes (SNs) exist across different nucleosome maps Nucleosome stability may be related to its location and the DNA sequence
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Kim M, Bae S, Oh I, Yoo J, Kim JS. Sequence-dependent twist-bend coupling in DNA minicircles. NANOSCALE 2021; 13:20186-20196. [PMID: 34847218 DOI: 10.1039/d1nr04672a] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
Looping of double-stranded DNA molecules with 100-200 base pairs into minicircles, catenanes, and rotaxanes has been suggested as a potential tool for DNA nanotechnologies. However, sharp DNA bending into a minicircle with a diameter of several to ten nanometers occurs with alterations in the DNA helical structure and may lead to defective kink formation that hampers the use of DNA minicircles, catenanes, and rotaxanes in nanoscale DNA applications. Here, we investigated local variations of a helical twist in sharply bent DNA using microsecond-long all-atom molecular dynamics simulations of six different DNA minicircles, focusing on the sequence dependence of the coupling between DNA bending and its helical twist. Twist angles between consecutive base pairs were analyzed at different locations relative to the direction of DNA bending and, among 10 unique dinucleotide steps, we identified four dinucleotide steps with strong twist-bend coupling, the pyrimidine-purine dinucleotide steps of TA/TA, CG/CG, and CA/TG and the purine-purine dinucleotide step of GA/TC. This work suggests the sequence-dependent structural responses of DNA to strong mechanical deformation, providing new molecular-level insights into the structure and stability of sharply bent DNA minicircles for nanoscale applications.
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Affiliation(s)
- Minjung Kim
- Department of Chemistry and Nanoscience, Ewha Womans University, Seoul 03760, Republic of Korea.
| | - Sehui Bae
- Department of Chemistry and Nanoscience, Ewha Womans University, Seoul 03760, Republic of Korea.
| | - Inrok Oh
- LG Chem Ltd, LG Science Park, Seoul 07796, Republic of Korea
| | - Jejoong Yoo
- Department of Physics, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 16419, Republic of Korea
| | - Jun Soo Kim
- Department of Chemistry and Nanoscience, Ewha Womans University, Seoul 03760, Republic of Korea.
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Serizay J, Dong Y, Jänes J, Chesney M, Cerrato C, Ahringer J. Distinctive regulatory architectures of germline-active and somatic genes in C. elegans. Genome Res 2020; 30:1752-1765. [PMID: 33093068 PMCID: PMC7706728 DOI: 10.1101/gr.265934.120] [Citation(s) in RCA: 26] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/12/2020] [Accepted: 10/08/2020] [Indexed: 01/08/2023]
Abstract
RNA profiling has provided increasingly detailed knowledge of gene expression patterns, yet the different regulatory architectures that drive them are not well understood. To address this, we profiled and compared transcriptional and regulatory element activities across five tissues of Caenorhabditis elegans, covering ∼90% of cells. We find that the majority of promoters and enhancers have tissue-specific accessibility, and we discover regulatory grammars associated with ubiquitous, germline, and somatic tissue–specific gene expression patterns. In addition, we find that germline-active and soma-specific promoters have distinct features. Germline-active promoters have well-positioned +1 and −1 nucleosomes associated with a periodic 10-bp WW signal (W = A/T). Somatic tissue–specific promoters lack positioned nucleosomes and this signal, have wide nucleosome-depleted regions, and are more enriched for core promoter elements, which largely differ between tissues. We observe the 10-bp periodic WW signal at ubiquitous promoters in other animals, suggesting it is an ancient conserved signal. Our results show fundamental differences in regulatory architectures of germline and somatic tissue–specific genes, uncover regulatory rules for generating diverse gene expression patterns, and provide a tissue-specific resource for future studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jacques Serizay
- The Gurdon Institute and Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1QN, United Kingdom
| | - Yan Dong
- The Gurdon Institute and Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1QN, United Kingdom
| | - Jürgen Jänes
- The Gurdon Institute and Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1QN, United Kingdom
| | - Michael Chesney
- The Gurdon Institute and Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1QN, United Kingdom
| | - Chiara Cerrato
- The Gurdon Institute and Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1QN, United Kingdom
| | - Julie Ahringer
- The Gurdon Institute and Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1QN, United Kingdom
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Pranckeviciene E, Hosid S, Liang N, Ioshikhes I. Nucleosome positioning sequence patterns as packing or regulatory. PLoS Comput Biol 2020; 16:e1007365. [PMID: 31986131 PMCID: PMC7004410 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007365] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/28/2019] [Revised: 02/06/2020] [Accepted: 12/06/2019] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Nucleosome positioning DNA sequence patterns (NPS)-usually distributions of particular dinucleotides or other sequence elements in nucleosomal DNA-at least partially determine chromatin structure and arrangements of nucleosomes that in turn affect gene expression. Statistically, NPS are defined as oscillations of the dinucleotide periodicity of about 10 base pairs (bp) which reflects the double helix period. We compared the nucleosomal DNA patterns in mouse, human and yeast organisms and observed few distinctive patterns that can be termed as packing and regulatory referring to distinctive modes of chromatin function. For the first time the NPS patterns in nucleus accumbens cells (NAC) in mouse brain were characterized and compared to the patterns in human CD4+ and apoptotic lymphocyte cells and well studied patterns in yeast. The NPS patterns in human CD4+ cells and mouse brain cells had very high positive correlation. However, there was no correlation between them and patterns in human apoptotic lymphocyte cells and yeast, but the latter two were highly correlated with each other. By their dinucleotide arrangements the analyzed NPS patterns classified into stable canonical WW/SS (W = A or T and S = C or G dinucleotide) and less stable RR/YY (R = A or G and Y = C or T dinucleotide) patterns and anti-patterns. In the anti-patterns positioning of the dinucleotides is flipped compared to those in the regular patterns. Stable canonical WW/SS patterns and anti-patterns are ubiquitously observed in many organisms and they had high resemblance between yeast and human apoptotic cells. Less stable RR/YY patterns had higher positive correlation between mouse and normal human cells. Our analysis and evidence from scientific literature lead to idea that various distinct patterns in nucleosomal DNA can be related to the two roles of the chromatin: packing (WW/SS) and regulatory (RR/YY and "anti").
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Affiliation(s)
- Erinija Pranckeviciene
- Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
- Department of Human and Medical Genetics, Biomedical Science Institute, Faculty of Medicine, Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania
- * E-mail: (EP); (II)
| | - Sergey Hosid
- Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
| | - Nathan Liang
- Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
| | - Ilya Ioshikhes
- Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
- Ottawa Institute of Systems Biology (OISB), Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
- * E-mail: (EP); (II)
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