Nucleosome repositioning via loop formation

Abstract

Active (catalysed) and passive (intrinsic) nucleosome repositioning is known to be a crucial event during the transcriptional activation of certain eucaryotic genes. Here we consider theoretically the intrinsic mechanism and study in detail the energetics and dynamics of DNA-loop-mediated nucleosome repositioning, as previously proposed by Schiessel et al. (H. Schiessel, J. Widom, R. F. Bruinsma, and W. M. Gelbart. 2001. {\it Phys. Rev. Lett.} 86:4414-4417). The surprising outcome of the present study is the inherent nonlocality of nucleosome motion within this model -- being a direct physical consequence of the loop mechanism. On long enough DNA templates the longer jumps dominate over the previously predicted local motion, a fact that contrasts simple diffusive mechanisms considered before. The possible experimental outcome resulting from the considered mechanism is predicted, discussed and compared to existing experimental findings.