Abstract
It is a widely held view that during the development of an organism genes that are to be activated in a particular cell type are assembled in a specific chromatin structure prior to the onset of transcription. Considerable effort has been devoted to elucidating the components of such “transcriptionally competent” chromatin. Evidence that active genes have a different chromatin structure from inactive genes has come from nuclease digestion experiments. In such experiments it has been found that all active genes or potentially active genes are very much more sensitive to digestion by DNase I than inactive genes. This sensitivity was primarily attributed to an altered core particle structure of the nucleosomes bound to active genes (1). The discovery that the small HMG proteins*, HMG-14 and HMG-17, could induce such a conformational change in nucleosomes (2) raised the possibility that the structural alterations that occur in nucleosomes prior to or during transcription could be analysed in detail.
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Goodwin, G.H., Nicolas, R.H., Wright, C.A., Zavou, S. (1985). The Structures and Functions of the Low Molecular Weight HMG Proteins. In: Reeck, G.R., Goodwin, G.H., Puigdomènech, P. (eds) Chromosomal Proteins and Gene Expression. NATO ASI Series, vol 101. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-7615-6_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-7615-6_15
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