DOI: 10.1073/pnas.97.1.127. Pulling a single chromatin fiber reveals the forces that maintain its higher-order structure

Pulling a single chromatin fiber reveals the forces that maintain its higher-order structure

10.1073/pnas.97.1.127

Crossref journal-article

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (341)

Abstract

Single chicken erythrocyte chromatin fibers were stretched and released at room temperature with force-measuring laser tweezers. In low ionic strength, the stretch-release curves reveal a process of continuous deformation with little or no internucleosomal attraction. A persistence length of 30 nm and a stretch modulus of ≈5 pN is determined for the fibers. At forces of 20 pN and higher, the fibers are modified irreversibly, probably through the mechanical removal of the histone cores from native chromatin. In 40–150 mM NaCl, a distinctive condensation-decondensation transition appears between 5 and 6 pN, corresponding to an internucleosomal attraction energy of ≈2.0 kcal/mol per nucleosome. Thus, in physiological ionic strength the fibers possess a dynamic structure in which the fiber locally interconverting between “open” and “closed” states because of thermal fluctuations.

Bibliography

Cui, Y., & Bustamante, C. (2000). Pulling a single chromatin fiber reveals the forces that maintain its higher-order structure. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97(1), 127â132.

Authors 2

Yujia Cui (first)
Carlos Bustamante (additional)

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Dates

Type	When
Created	23 years, 1 month ago (July 26, 2002, 10:31 a.m.)
Deposited	3 years, 4 months ago (April 13, 2022, 5:22 p.m.)
Indexed	3 weeks, 1 day ago (Aug. 6, 2025, 9:54 a.m.)
Issued	25 years, 7 months ago (Jan. 4, 2000)
Published	25 years, 7 months ago (Jan. 4, 2000)
Published Online	25 years, 7 months ago (Jan. 4, 2000)
Published Print	25 years, 7 months ago (Jan. 4, 2000)

Funders 0

None

BibTeX

@article{Cui_2000, title={Pulling a single chromatin fiber reveals the forces that maintain its higher-order structure}, volume={97}, ISSN={1091-6490}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.97.1.127}, DOI={10.1073/pnas.97.1.127}, number={1}, journal={Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences}, publisher={Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences}, author={Cui, Yujia and Bustamante, Carlos}, year={2000}, month=jan, pages={127–132} }

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