Designing nucleosomal force sensors.

Tompitak M; de Bruin L; Eslami-Mossallam B; Schiessel H

doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.95.052402

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Journal article

Designing nucleosomal force sensors.

Tompitak M Instituut-Lorentz for Theoretical Physics, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9506, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands.
de Bruin L Section de Mathématiques, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
Eslami-Mossallam B Department of Bionanoscience, Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, Delft University of Technology, Lorentzweg 1, 2628 CJ Delft, The Netherlands.
Schiessel H Instituut-Lorentz for Theoretical Physics, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9506, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands.

2017-06-17

Published in:

Physical review. E. - 2017

English About three quarters of our DNA is wrapped into nucleosomes: DNA spools with a protein core. It is well known that the affinity of a given DNA stretch to be incorporated into a nucleosome depends on the geometry and elasticity of the basepair sequence involved, causing the positioning of nucleosomes. Here we show that DNA elasticity can have a much deeper effect on nucleosomes than just their positioning: it affects their "identities". Employing a recently developed computational algorithm, the mutation Monte Carlo method, we design nucleosomes with surprising physical characteristics. Unlike any other nucleosomes studied so far, these nucleosomes are short-lived when put under mechanical tension whereas other physical properties are largely unaffected. This suggests that the nucleosome, the most abundant DNA-protein complex in our cells, might more properly be considered a class of complexes with a wide array of physical properties, and raises the possibility that evolution has shaped various nucleosome species according to their genomic context.

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