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Chromatin structure describes the physical structure of chromatin within the eukaryotic nucleus and how structure affects chromatin processes such as transcription. The repeating unit of chromatin, the nucleosome, consists of approximately 147 base pairs of DNA wrapped around eight histone protein cores. Linker DNA, upwards of 80 base pairs long, connects two histones between each nucleosome core unit.
Here, the authors generate a mouse line by knocking in the auxin-inducible degron tag to the SMARCA4 gene, which encodes BRG1. They suggest that BRG1 primarily contributes positively to chromatin accessibility, RNAP binding, and nascent RNA production.
Research on the Kit locus shows TAD boundary deletion may or may not trigger ectopic gene activation in different cell types, influenced by active enhancers’ position relative gene promoters.
Here, the authors present MTAC, a method to map chromosomal interactions in budding yeast. By applying MTAC to various viewpoints, they find that most of the long-distance chromosomal interactions detected by MTAC reflect tethering by the nuclear pore complexes.
In this work, the authors apply polymer models to reconstruct the 3D structure of the genome during SARS-CoV-2 infection and examine how the virus impacts key mechanisms of chromatin organization.
The heterochromatic 'condensates' may not be conserved across mammals. This study highlights the influence of host genome on nuclear architecture and challenges the hypothesis that heterochromatin and MeCP2 undergo phase separation.
A study describes chromatin accessibility and paired gene expression across the entire developing human brain during the first trimester in the context of gene regulation and neurodevelopmental disease.
A study in Nature Genetics identifies many regulators of genome-wide chromatin accessibility and then reports the mechanistic underpinnings for one of the identified transcription factors.
Genome architecture mapping (GAM) enables understanding of 3D genome structure in the nucleus. We directly compared multiplex-GAM and Hi-C data and found that local chromatin interactions were generally detected by both methods, but active genomic regions rich in enhancers that established higher-order contacts were preferentially detected by GAM.