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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.
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.
Plants utilize transcriptional dynamics to adapt to cold stress. Here, Zhang et al. describe a network of chromatin interactions between gene promoters across the Arabidopsis genome that could facilitate co-regulation of gene expression during cold stress.
CTCF, which is known to play critical role in chromatin structure, undergoes post-translational modifications (PTMs). In this research, O-GlcNAcylation was found to inhibit CTCF binding, impacting 3D chromatin structure, gene expression and cellular development.
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.